ACCA Sri Lanka holds Financial Hackathon Season 2

Winner

1st Runner up

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), having been instrumental in holding the first-ever financial hackathon in the country in 2018, which due to its tremendous success, was there-after held virtually for State universities over the last two consecutive years.

ACCA recently conducted a financial hackathon for a host of foreign/private universities that was held as a platform-based competition.

The teams from leading foreign/private universities worked around the clock to come up with intelligent solutions to case studies presented to them on managing and overcoming the current challenges that have arisen in the finance industry.

The teams then pitched their ideas to a panel of top academics and industry experts, where they were evaluated on a range of criteria that comprised user potential, level of innovation and commercial potential.

The Panel of Judges included 

KPMG Partner and ACCA Member Suren Rajakarier, 

University of Sri Jayawardenapura Accounting Department Senior Lecturer Dr. Sanjeevanie Cooray, 

International Finance Corporation (IFC) Operations Officer Rathnija Arandara, and Fairfirst Insurance CFO and ACCA Member Ravishankar Wickneswaran.

After some impressive presentations and pitches from all participating teams, the team representing CA Sri Lanka School of Accounting and Business came out on top, with the 1st runner-up being the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology and the 2nd runner-up position was secured by the National Institute of Business Management. ACCA Sri Lanka Head Nilusha Ranasinghe said: “Our main aim through this event is to foster and harness out of the box thinking and collaboration amongst our youth in a virtual environment and to help them contribute their talents to think of ideas that will revolutionise the way forward for the financial industry that is evolving at a very rapid pace, especially due to the pandemic in force. It also gave a great opportunity for the participants to be coached by some of the top industry experts, meet new people virtually and learn new skills. Inspiration, innovation and learning in a digital environment was the backbone of ACCA Virtual FINHACK and we hope it gave our participants a deeper understanding of the challenges they will face to stay at the forefront of the finance industry in the future.”

As the world’s most forward-thinking professional accountancy body, ACCA believes that accountancy is vital for economies to grow and prosper, and works with government and businesses across the world to build the profession and make the industry more ethical and transparent.