In October 2023, the Bank of Cyprus organized their 4th Boc Hackathon at the IDEA innovation center in Nicosia and our company team at Finovex had to attend! With little to no preparation, our team identified a gap in the current state of auditing when it comes to online banking. At the time, auditors had to request access via post to verify that the money that a company had declared was the money they had. This involved a time-consuming back-and-forth of cluttered paperwork and miscommunication as packages would sometimes be lost and have to be re-sent or re-signed. This ended up being costly for all parties involved, as the bank itself had to approve an auditor’s request to check a customer’s balance only after the auditor got permission from them via post. Having been given access to the Bank Of Cyprus’ open banking APIs, we created a platform where auditors could register, view their customers, and request access to each of them immediately. Similarly, customers could log in and provide consent in real-time, at which point the bank would automatically authorize the auditors to view the customer’s balance data until the date of consent.

With tens of other professionals and PhD. students competing, each of them proposing startups with crypto-currencies, AI, GPT-based budgeting assistants, and even voice-activated banking assistants, the competition was fierce. Nevertheless, having intrigued the judges with our solid, concise, and contextual business plan made by our CEO and a demo presented eloquently by myself, they agreed to implement it and awarded us the 3rd prize!

All in all, it was an amazing 48-hour experience that involved getting to know people of all backgrounds. From businesses to entrepreneurs to PhD students to new graduates with astonishingly innovative ideas, it was a fun mix of creativity!