Imagine a 30-year-old Thai male who has a government job, is married, and dreams of owning a car and a house. Let us call him Kitti. As it stands, Kitti’s monthly salary of THB 27,000 is not enough. As a result, Kitti is in debt.

Enter a team of five young students from the Chulalongkorn School of Integrated Innovation (ScII), who propose a solution based on Artificial Intelligence. The proposed solution reduces Kitti’s debt, helps him manage his expenses, and helps him invest. In the TMB Thanachart Bank (TTB) contest called “Financial Wellbeing Hackathon for Thais,” this batch of five students successfully pitched their solution and won top honors.

The contest consisted of three competitive rounds spanning nearly two months, beginning with over 100 teams. Of the 100+ teams that submitted a written proposal in September 2022, only 30 made it to the second round. “The third and final round took place on 29-30 October, when we won first prize,” says a beaming Gaysornthip Manajira, a third-year student in the Bachelor of Arts and Science in Integrated Innovation (BAScii) program. Gaysornthip Manajira and her classmates Sukkasem Thanarungrak, Tanabhume Jungpipatanakul, Jenjira Kitwakin, and Akrit Woranithiphong, won first place with their pitch titled “TTB Forward.”

The team portrayed Mr. Kitti as a representative of their target audience — a person who struggles with debt management, who wants to invest but is afraid of risk, and who lacks the necessary knowledge to help him overcome his financial problems. As Sukkasem Thanarungrak comments, “Our goal was to reduce his debt, manage his budget effectively, and then help him transition into investment management.” “What we pitched was an AI-driven extension of the TTB app,” adds Tanabhume Jungpipatanakul.

Taking down the negatives, reducing the debt, managing the budget, and locking a portion of his monthly earnings into an investment were our core focuses, explains Jenjira Kitwakin. Another feature was consolidating all debt in one place and using AI to predict regular expenses. “By refinancing and consolidating, we can achieve a modicum of stability, after which we can proceed with an investment plan dependent on expenses,” explains Akrit Woranithiphong.

After submitting a written proposal in the first round, the team moved on to a video pitch in the second round and entered the final hackathon, which spread over two days. It was now up to the 15 finalist teams who entered the final live pitch. TTB provided the teams with external mentors and prominent Fintech experts to guide them.

There was no easy way to persuade six judges, three of whom were from TTB, including the TTB CEO. But in the end, the BAScii team won a cash prize of 200,000 THB. Hopefully, Mr. Kitti too will benefit from BAScii students’ innovation.

Link to TTB announcement: https://media.ttbbank.com/1/hackathon/ttb-hackathon-winner.pdf