A hackathon that was part innovation spirit, part Nordic endurance test, and part team-building masterclass
The Scene: Helsinki, April 2025
Hosted at the Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) in the heart of Helsinki, the hackathon brought together minds from across the international financial institution (IFI) universe—EBRD, NIB, CIB, EIB, Islamic Development Bank, ESM, and the Asian Development Bank. The theme? Build AI-powered applications that solve real business problems. The vibe? Think Silicon Valley meets Scandinavian hospitality—with better pastries.
This hackathon was initiated through the CIO Forum, a collaborative platform for IT leaders across IFIs. Our participation was made possible thanks to our CIO, and his counterpart at NIB, both active members of the forum who championed the event and strongly supported our involvement.
Seven of us from EBRD showed up in various roles—engineers, product owners and UX designers. We came armed with ideas, pitched them like pros, and ended up leading three teams.
The winning ideas that caught the jury’s eye:
P3 Risk Sense - An AI-powered platform for financial risk prediction and prevention.
Eco-Bridge: A green finance risk assessment and alert platform.
The Eco-bridge app
The app is a ESG risk assessment tool that would screen and rate economic agents based on their actions in the public space through articles, social media posts and other documents shared publicly.
The working application would present a list of economic agents 'of interest'. The sketches used to build up the app are listed below.
The app would have multiple role access - one would be the investment bank agent that would check the screening details and make sure that the information is accurate, and another one would be the investors that want to invest in a ESG compliant economic agent.
