Lion's Den - ING Modeling Challenge case study
photo: Participants and stuff of Lion's Den ING Modeling Challenge, CGMCreativeStudio
At the heart of banking and fintech lies risk management. Talented analytic minds were invited to compete in Lion’s Den ING Modeling Challenge to create the best risk modeling solutions.
Duration: May 16-17
Prize pool: 25.000 PLN + travel reimbursement
Location: Warsaw
Number of registered participants: 80
Risk modeling challenge details
The on-site challenge was organized in collaboration of ChallengeRocket.com and ING Bank Śląski. The goal of the event was to enable young talented minds of students and professionals to create new risk solutions that shape up the future of risk modeling and risk analysis. The winners had a chance to join ING Bank Śląski. During the event the participants were able to consult their ideas and problems with mentors available on-site.
Assignment
Lion’s Den was a two-stage event. To qualify to the modeling challenge registered contestants needed to complete a pre-selection assignment to prove their skills are on par with jury’s requirements. This task consisted of analyzing provided dataset containing non-identifiable information to perform data-analysis-based challenge, and was divided into three parts. The solution, along with personal statement, had to be submitted in the form of a 30 seconds video, 150 words document, or an infographic, depending on participants’ preferences. The presented solutions were to include 5 key points (and 15 points in total) The submissions were individually reviewed by the jury who later reached out to eligible participants to confirm their participation. This part of the challenge lasted until May 13.
Onsite hackathon
The contestants from pre-selection assignment who confirmed their participation all met together at Google Campus in Warsaw where their registrations began. As some of the people arrived not having teams those were formed ad-hoc. After all the paperwork was done everybody attended the keynote: The new face of Risk Modelling in the Digital Economy, by Dominik Ogonowski. Not long after this valuable piece of inspiration the participants got their hands dirty. Well, figuratively speaking. The main part of the event, that is the actual hackathon, began. The process of creating projects lasted for 8 hours, from 4pm to midnight, and the next day consisted of pitch workshops, mentoring sessions and project presentations, quickly followed by award ceremony.
What this modeling challenge taught us
We, ChallengeRocket.com, focus on both online and onsite hackathons and challenges, as both of those present us with different problems to solve and lessons to learn. During ING Modeling Challenge we’ve faced issues, unexpected ones, that needed rapid solution, and our team, like usual, was up to the task. The registration and reception process was a bit more problematic than we’d expected but everything worked out perfectly and no complaints were received!
As Paweł Kwiatkowski, CEO of ChallengeRocket.com said: Nothing ever goes quite according to the plan. You may believe all the precautions were taken yet there’s always risk that a small detail, small hiccup will always shake things up. You need to be creative in those situations, and I’m proud to say our team was nothing short of that. As for the event itself, we love meeting our community in person. Online challenges are a great experience of their own kind, but nothing beats seeing smiling faces in person, people being busy during the event that you’re a part of.
We are extremely happy to be organizing onsite challenges, we love the energy during those events. Would you like to experience it yourself as well? Well look no further, we at ChallengeRocket.com can help you with that!
