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SupTech Hackathon 2023
Beyond Chatbots: Advanced Consumer Complaints Analytics

The collaboration between the Cambridge SupTech Lab and the Alliance for Innovative Regulation culminated in the SupTech Hackathon 2023. This event, held virtually from July 26 to August 4, convened data scientists, innovators, and technologists from around the globe. The overarching goal was to harness their expertise to effect positive change in the realms of financial consumer protection and market conduct. Focusing on this year’s theme, “Beyond Chatbots: Consumer Complaints Analytics,” the hackathon solicited innovative solutions. These solutions aimed to empower financial supervisory agencies with the capability to extract actionable insights from consumer complaints and supervisory data. Notably, the event spotlighted advanced analytics of complaint data sourced from governmental portals, alongside the potential of innovative chatbot technologies. 

This hackathon is open to teams or individuals with skills in data science and analysis, business analysis, product management, software development, database administration, data visualization, team leaders, and/or other skills valuable in exploring solutions using advanced technology.

Business Analyst
You understand how to link problems with technology solutions and can talk the language of the technologists and users
Data Engineer or DBA
You understand the nuances of piping data from source to storage, such as the value of a well-designed schema and the merging of multiple datasets
Product Specialist or Developer
You can think through how to develop and design a product that will meet the needs of the different users and be viable to implement
Team Leader
In addition to a team role, you will be responsible for curating your team, managing its timeline and deliverables, and acting as point person for organizers
Data Visualisation Designer
You can make data and insights pop. Designing interfaces that are intuitive and clear
Data Scientists and Data Analysts
You are able to build usable views and valuable insights from complex data. Spotting opportunities for advanced data analytics and identifying schema requirements

Additionally, teams were supported by financial supervision and regulation experts who have in-depth knowledge about the challenges that financial authorities, regulators and supervisors face in collecting and utilising consumer complaint data.

Intro & Kickoff
July 26

1.5 hours

Online Hackathon
July 27 – August 3

Team-based, asynchronous & self-paced

Demo day
August 4
3 hours

The hackathon drew participation from a wide array of global stakeholders, representing 14 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Peru, Singapore, United Kingdom and United States of America. 

 

Background

The digitalisation of finance has revolutionised the way people interact with financial services. With unprecedented convenience and accessibility, new threats and risks related to fraud and market misconduct have also arisen. Effective oversight is crucial to protect consumers, ensure they are treated fairly, and improve overall transparency in financial markets.

Financial authorities (public agencies that regulate and supervise financial systems and institutions) and suptech vendors are deploying new applications to expand the availability of recourse mechanisms to all demographics and to improve the use of consumer complaints as a valuable source of data to extract insights into consumer behavior, market trends, risk patterns, effectiveness of regulatory regimes, and the accountability of financial firms.

The challenge we aim to address

Suptech applications like chatbots have addressed some of the limitations of legacy complaints collection systems and are creating more accessible and reliable channels for users to engage with financial firms and authorities when problems arise. Digitally transformed complaints management systems have reduced time to resolution and load on the supervisory authority. However, some challenges remain for these new tools to deliver to their full potential.

Through this hackathon we sought to further (a) the efficient deployment of such applications in new jurisdictions, and (b) the ability to draw intelligence such as trends and anomalies from historical complaints data. Currently, each authority goes through the time-consuming process of mapping complaint data schema, exploring historical data for analytics, and designing reporting dashboards individually. This has led to inconsistent data collection, under-utilised data and missed opportunities to identify systemic risk and issues.

Proposed approach and impact

During this hackathon we explored existing customer complaint’s data (shared by partnering financial authorities) and the standardisation of data schemas to identify trends, correlations and patterns with the goal of generating useful information for both consumers and the financial authorities. As a result, financial authorities were able to shift towards data-driven decision-making, proactive issue resolution, customer-centric service and standardised processes to strengthen their supervisory capabilities, enabling them to effectively safeguard and empower financial consumers.

Teams generated innovative solutions that addressed the following needs:

1

Data Exploration and Analysis

  • Develop algorithms or techniques to identify patterns, correlations, and anomalies in consumer complaint data
  • Uncover hidden connections and commonalities among complaints that may indicate systemic issues or unethical practices
  • Implement data mining and machine learning approaches to uncover valuable insights beyond complaint classification
  • Build visualisation tools to present findings and facilitate a deeper understanding of underlying issues and customer behaviors
  • Design methods to identify early warning signs of harm and instability in order to enhance consumer protection and improve industry practices

2

Data Limitations And Detection Capabilities

  • Identify and address limitations in the available data that may hinder the detection of systemic risk assessment
  • Evaluate the capabilities of the existing data sources and propose improvements or alternative data collection methods
  • Implement data cleansing and preprocessing techniques to ensure data quality and reliability

3

Optimised Data Schema

  • Define a core set of parameters for a consumer complaint data schema that enables efficient consumer resolution and fosters useful analytics
  • Identify the structure and anatomy of a complaint to determine the essential fields for comprehensive data collection and analysis
  • Consider barriers to entry and completion when designing the data schema to reduce abandoned complaints

Demo day hosts

Matt Grasser

The Cambridge SupTech Lab

He/Him

Bio:

Matt is the Co-Founder and Co-Head of the Cambridge SupTech Lab. He is a seasoned leader in expanding the frontier of the digital technology space, with over 15 years of broad-ranging, global experience to draw from. His driving passion throughout has been maximizing impact through effectively applied technologies, with an emphasis on meeting the needs of otherwise excluded or vulnerable people. This pursuit has led him into roles as a pioneering fintech entrepreneur, startup acceleration fund lead, hackathon & techsprint organizer, innovation gallery curator, academic lecturer, and strategic advisor for myriad financial innovation and digital transformation initiatives.

Matt’s specialization is in the collaborative design, deployment, and integration of digital technologies. Within the bounds of financial services and supervision, he often serves as a translator in cutting through the intimidating jargon and hype that can plague cutting-edge tech, and instead guides an earnest exploration of the real value of these tools through practical demonstration cases.

The programmes that Matt has collaboratively led in the past include the RegTech for Regulators Accelerator (R2A), the Catalyst Fund Startup Accelerator, the GSMA’s Mobile Money Profitability 2.0 model, and the Target Product Profile framework for development of inclusive payments products. He previously founded Bytemark, a mobile payments and transit ticketing platform; LDLN, a decentralized communication platform for underserved communities; What Is Up Labs, a creative cooperative focused on rapid prototyping. Prior to the Lab, he most recently served a Principal Consultant at BFA Global.

Matt holds a degree in Aerospace Engineering, and formal certifications in Data Science, Social Entrepreneurship, Machine Learning, and Humanitarian Innovation.

Matt Grasser

Co-Head & Tech Lead
The Cambridge SupTech Lab

Chair for Opening Speaker and Co-Host

Shelley Anderson

Alliance for Innovative Regulation

She/Her

Bio:

A seasoned TechSprint leader, Shelley spent 16 years at the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority before coming to AIR in January 2022. Starting in 2015, she was part of the FCA’s Regtech team, designing and leading TechSprints and developing the regulator’s approach to interacting with the global Regtech ecosystem. Specializing in innovation for vulnerable consumers, Shelley has designed programs that look at the barriers faced by digital financial services consumers, and at how both regulators and firms can design better products for inclusion. At AIR, Shelley works on planning and producing TechSprints, leads the organization’s program to further expand its global reach, and focuses on ways to ignite technology innovation throughout the financial system. In addition, Shelley is co-founder of the Women In Regulatory Innovation (WIRI) network, which is creating a community of women across the globe with the aim of building meaningful diversity and inclusion within the regulatory system. She lives in the U.K., just outside of London, with her husband and three daughters.

Shelley Anderson

Program Director
Alliance for Innovative Regulation

Demo Day Host

Opening Speaker

Kwame discussed Opportunities and Challenges that financial authorities, regulators and supervisors face in collecting and utilising consumer complaints data.

Kwame A. Oppong

Head, FinTech and Innovation

Bank of Ghana

He/Him

Bio:

Kwame Oppong is the Head of Fintech and Innovation at Bank of Ghana. His background spans Technology, Digital Financial Services (DFS) operations, policy development, and regulation. He has consulted for several governments, public sector institutions, international development organizations and private corporations globally.

Prior to joining the Bank, Kwame worked with CGAP (World Bank Group), Millicom, Hewlett Packard Company (now HP EB) and other organizations in the banking, housing finance and health insurance industries.

He holds a BSc in Business Administration, an MSc in Business, Executive Education in policy design and certifications blockchain, cloud computing, virtualization, financial inclusion and others. Kwame is a passionate advocate for financial inclusion, innovation, and the development of digital economies.

Kwame A. Oppong

Head, FinTech & Innovation
Bank of Ghana

Panel

Panelists discussed the importance of capturing and using customer data to improve consumer protection, and how we could overcome barriers to implement solutions in this space.

Jo Ann Barefoot

Alliance for Innovative Regulation

She/Her

Bio:

Jo Ann Barefoot is CEO & Co-founder of the Alliance for Innovative Regulation (AIR), host of the global podcast show Barefoot Innovation, and Senior Fellow Emerita at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Business & Government. She has been Deputy Comptroller of the Currency, partner at KPMG, Co-Chairman of Treliant Risk Advisors, and a staff member at the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. She serves on the boards of Oportun and FinRegLab, and on advisory bodies for FINRA, the Milken Institute, and the California Blockchain Working Group. She formerly served on the board of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. She is Co-founder of Hummingbird RegTech. In 2021, Jo Ann was named Fintech Woman of the Year by Finovate and selected to the Forbes list of 50 Over 50. She is also in the Fintech Hall of Fame. She previously served on the CFPB’s Consumer Advisory Board and chaired the board of the Financial Health Network. She has published nearly 200 articles and speaks each year to thousands of people throughout the world.

Jo Ann Barefoot

CEO & Co-Founder
Alliance for Innovative Regulation

Panel Host

Sheila Senfuma Nakanyike

Head of Programme.

Digital Finance

Consumers International

She/Her

Bio:

Sheila Senfuma Nakanyike is the Head of Programme for Digital Finance at Consumers International, the membership organisation for 200+ consumer advocacy groups around the world in more than 100 countries. Consumers International works with members and partners to empower consumers, to ensure consumers are treated safely, fairly and honestly worldwide, and to drive change in the marketplace on global consumer issues including digital access and rights, product safety and sustainability.

Prior to joining Consumers International, Sheila worked for the UN World Food Programme Uganda, heading the Cash based Transfers and digital financial inclusion unit. Sheila has also worked for Ensibuuko, a leading financial technology company in Africa, the Bank Policy Institute in Washington DC as an Atlas Corps FinTech fellow, and also worked at Citibank.

Sheila Senfuma Nakanyike

Head of Programme.
Digital Finance
Consumers International

Curtis Matlock

Chief Executive Officer

Proto

He/Him

Bio:

Curtis is CEO of Proto, the local communication platform for business and government. Proto applies inclusive conversational AI technology to engage multilingual customers and solve consumer protection challenges across local and mixed languages. Notable deployments in countries such as the Philippines and Rwanda are enabled via partnerships with international development organizations and SupTech industry leaders.

Curtis Matlock

Chief Executive Officer
Proto

Kit Ruparel

Chief Technology Officer

RecordSure

He/Him

Bio:

Kit has 30 years of commercial product development experience, executing R&D, IT, business operations, branding and consulting projects; the majority of which has been gained at start-ups that have been taken through VC funding rounds, private equity raisings, management buy-outs, acquisitions, spin-offs and public listings.

Kit is currently the CTO for Recordsure, applying artificial intelligence to sales conversations in the financial services industry; and over the previous 10 years has been CTO in Residence at Ariadne Capital, working with a large portfolio of startups, has held interim director positions at Insight HQ & Medelinked; and was VP Product Strategy and Global IT Director for SpinVox, acquired by Nuance, now Microsoft.

Kit is a Chartered IT Professional, a BCS Membership Assessor and has voluntarily assisted the British Computer Society, the National Computer Centre, the DTI, the Learning and Skills Council and the government eSkills programme on a range of topics from Professionalism in IT initiatives to defining skills frameworks for CIOs through to IT end-users.

Kit Ruparel

Chief Technology Officer
Recordsure

Jamile Valles

Deputy Assistant Superintendent,

Market Conduct Analysis Department, SBS

She/Her

Bio:

Jamile is a proficient professional with an MBA from Bologna University School in Italy and a law degree from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. With 13 years of experience in consumer protection and market conduct supervision of financial and insurance entities, she currently serves as the Deputy Assistant Superintendent in the Market Conduct Analysis Department at the Superintendency of Banking, Insurance, and Private Pension Funds Administrators (SBS) in Perú. Her expertise includes supervisory and regulatory projects, as well as participation in suptech initiatives focused on market conduct.

Jamile Valles

Deputy Assistant Superintendent,
Market Conduct Analysis Department, SBS

Judges

Nick Cook

Alliance for Innovative Regulation

He/Him

Bio:

Nick Cook is Chief Innovation Officer at AIR. Based in London, he was previously the Director of the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) Innovation Division, including the agency’s RegTech and TechSprint initiatives, its data and analytics strategy, machine learning endeavours, and the “Innovate” program (encompassing the Regulatory Sandbox, innovation and digital policy, and industry-facing direct support services).

In 2016, Nick was responsible for creating and developing the TechSprint as a new methodology for regulatory innovation and public/private collaboration, designing a model that is now widely emulated around the world. He has led TechSprints on challenges ranging from financial crime and regulatory reporting to financial access and inclusion, women’s economic empowerment, pensions, and money and mental health.

At AIR, Nick heads the TechSprint program and the nascent AIR Fair Finance Accelerator, working with partners and the innovation ecosystem to define its scope, governance, strategy, and activities. He helps develop AIR’s relationships with financial regulatory institutions globally and specifically in emerging markets, and he represents AIR in public forums through speaking and writing.

Matt Grasser

Co-Head and Cofounder
Cambridge SupTech Lab

Chair of Judges

Matthew Harris

Head of Data Science

Datakind

He/Him

Bio:

Matthew is the Head of Data Science at DataKind, a non-profit that helps social sector organizations harness the power of data science and AI in the service of humanity. He works closely with a global team of talented volunteer experts with visionary social actors to collaboratively design innovative solutions to tough social challenges across a wide range of domains such as environmental justice, financial inclusion, frontline health, and humanitarian response. Matt has worked extensively in commercial customer support, launching chatbots for knowledge retrieval and feedback triage.

Matthew Harris

Head of Data Science
Datakind

Ricardo Barba

Deputy Assistant Superintendent,

Market Conduct Supervision Department, SBS.

He/Him

Bio:

Ricardo is the Head of the Market Conduct Supervision Department of the Superintendence of Banking, Insurance, and Private Pensions Funds of Peru (SBS). He is responsible for directing the deployment of supervisory actions to ensure the adoption of sound business practices by companies in the financial, insurance, and private pension systems in their relationship with consumers. Ricardo has participated in issuing various rules that comprise the current regulatory framework for financial consumer protection in Peru and leads initiatives and projects to continuously strengthen the market conduct supervision model of the SBS, including implementing SupTech tools.

Ricardo Barba

Deputy Assistant Superintendent,
Market Conduct Supervision Department, SBS.

Danica Damljanovic

CEO & Co-Founder

Sentient Machines

She/Her

Bio:

Danica has over two decades of experience in AI and NLP, and over a decade in the financial industry, and has worked with the SRI team that developed Siri, before setting up Sentient Machines to build an advanced conversational analytics platform that analyses both voice and words in order to identify critical events and behaviours in your customer interactions, to reduce compliance risk, increase team efficiency and well-being, and increase your customer happiness. As an internationally recognised scientist Danica has published more than 50 publications, and a book on text analytics, cited over 2000 times. She received her PhD in AI and NLP from the University of Sheffield.

Danica Damljanovic

CEO & Co-Founder
Sentient Machines

Kwame A. Oppong

Head, FinTech and Innovation

Bank of Ghana

He/Him

Bio:

Kwame Oppong is the Head of Fintech and Innovation at Bank of Ghana. His background spans Technology, Digital Financial Services (DFS) operations, policy development, and regulation. He has consulted for several governments, public sector institutions, international development organizations and private corporations globally.

Prior to joining the Bank, Kwame worked with CGAP (World Bank Group), Millicom, Hewlett Packard Company (now HP EB) and other organizations in the banking, housing finance and health insurance industries.

He holds a BSc in Business Administration, an MSc in Business, Executive Education in policy design and certifications blockchain, cloud computing, virtualization, financial inclusion and others. Kwame is a passionate advocate for financial inclusion, innovation, and the development of digital economies.

Kwame A. Oppong

Head, FinTech & Innovation
Bank of Ghana

Judging criteria

Judges assessed creativity and innovation, speed to market, and how transformative the solution could be.

More specifically, given that our primary goal was to drive ecosystem-wide exploration of the data and a diversity of insights and results, we identified solutions that stand out across several factors, including:

  • Value for financial regulation supervisors: Complaints systems necessarily involve value for the supervisors who interact with and use these systems daily, and who will be available during the week to advise
  • Value for financial institutions and end users of financial services: Top solutions should explicitly identify hypotheses as to how their approaches could lead to increased value for supervised entities and financial citizens.
  • Incorporation of available data: Top solutions will have used all provided datasets, referencing gaps and particularly useful data points where applicable
  • Solution feasibility: A key component of the top solutions will be to explicitly discuss feasibility of the technical approach, as well as considering the process of integration in rolling out these solutions
  • Novelty: Uniqueness of the approach within the suptech space will also be considered in evaluating results

Incentives and benefits for participants

Solutions that are identified as having stood out will be:

  • Spotlighted in our websites and communication gaining exposure to potential sponsors and partners
  • Featured during SupTech Week, a global event hosted by the Cambridge SupTech Lab in the Fall 2023
  • Considered for prototyping and deployment in partnership with financial authorities through the Cambridge SupTech Lab Launchpad
  • Showcased to fellow data scientists and technologists in the Data for Good community

This hackathon is an opportunity to build and explore cool data solutions that have a real impact on the lives of millions of households and individuals, as well as to connect with great people with similar ambitions and recognised experts in this sector who are making a concrete positive difference in this space. Join us!

 

Awards

Central to the event was a panel discussion that explored the importance of harnessing customer data to enhance consumer protection. The panel deliberated on strategies to overcome the challenges hindering the implementation of solutions in this domain. Esteemed members of the panel included Jo Ann Barefoot, CEO & Co-Founder of the Alliance for Innovative Regulation, as the Panel Chair.  The culmination of the hackathon witnessed the recognition of outstanding contributions through a set of awards. Chaired by Matt Grasser, the panel of judges, comprised of industry leaders, evaluated the prototypes submitted by participants. Three distinct awards were conferred:

1. Breakthrough Award: Recognising the prototype most poised for deployment into production and use by financial regulatory authorities

2. Eureka Award: Celebrating the prototype that captured the judges’ attention through its creativity and ingenuity

3. Jump Award: Honoring the prototype with the highest potential to drive transformative change in regulatory oversight and supervision, resulting in a significant leap forward

With the successful conclusion of the hackathon, which boasted the participation of 40 hackers across 5 teams, as well as an audience representing approximately 90 regulated entities from diverse corners of the world, the event achieved its intended impact. The innovative ideas and presentations generated during the hackathon will be thoughtfully reviewed and potentially incorporated into future initiatives by the Cambridge SupTech Lab.

Watch the Demo Day video of the SupTech Hackathon 2023
Beyond Chatbots: Advanced Consumer Complaints Analytics

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With the collaboration of

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