MIT has recruited TD Bank and Prudential to sponsor its first-ever fintech hackathon.
The two-day event in February is challenging students and young professionals to create an interdisciplinary team and compete for a $10,000 prize pot.
In the TD Bank-sponsored hacks, participating teams will have access to data and APIs provided by the Canadian bank with a brief to provide insights into consumer behaviour and develop a platform that offers employees real-time prompts to improve interactions with customers.
The 30-hour hack will culminate with a demo to a panel of judges and mentors, with the winning team pocketing a $4k grand prize and the four runners up walking away with $2k bonuses.
In 2015, MIT created the first graduate-level course in the US to focus on building innovative financial technology businesses. The seven-week Fintech Ventures course is run by The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and the Finance Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management, in collaboration with the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Harvard Law School.