On Tuesday, December 4th, the DCU/Manning School of Business Innovation Contest was held in Moloney Hall at UCrossing from 6 to 9PM. Six teams competed with their innovative banking and finance ideas. Each team left with $100 per team member as a cash prize and the winning team received an additional $500 per team member. The event began with food and networking.
Once the audience was settled in, Sandra Richtermeyer, Dean of the Manning School of Business opened the event by thanking everyone who put in hard work to make this all come together. She then introduced the judges; Jim Regan, President & CEO of DCU, Michelle Silveira, Senior VP & CMO of Jeanne D’Arc Credit Union, and Vasilios Roussos, Managing Director at Fintech Innovation Center.
Once the judges were introduced, the team pitches ensued. The first team to go was Asset Tracker. Their team consisted of Chris Bradley, Michael Gergley, Jared Girourd, Zachary Palmer, and Michael Rivers. The team pitched their idea of an integrative finance app that can keep track of all of the user’s accounts and assets in one place.
The judges listen in to the first pitch of the night.
The next group was ATM fast App by John Lesack, and Conrad Nelson. This duo pitched an app that can improve your ATM experience easier by making the majority of your transaction remotely before using an ATM, while maintaining the utmost security.
Next to the stage was Chip Away, consisting of William Hanna, George Le (2018 Idea Challenge winner), Peter Maitland, and Hannah Wright. Their idea, Chip Away, was a creative solution to helping people pay off student debt.
Finance 4 Life was the next team up. Members included Brett Battaglia, Brian Conneely, and Stephen Sarrouf. Their idea was an interactive Finance app targeted for High School and College students that taught Finance in a fun way.
Brett from Finance 4 Life displays the layout of their app
Finance 4 Life was followed by another team with a Finance app; Proactive Student. Siddhant Iyer, and Sourabh Kulkarni demonstrated how their app would work and fielded questions from the panel of judges.
The last team to pitch was Universal Cash Deposit ATM. This team consisting of Keegan LaPierre and Aidan Kilgannon pitched their idea of innovative ATM software to make depositing cash anywhere easier.
At the conclusion of the presentations, the judges exited the room to deliberate, then returned to announce their decision. The winning group was Chip Away! The team won a total of $2,400 in cash prizes.
In total, DCU awarded $3,800 to the teams at the competition.
The Grand Prize winners, Chip Away
Thank you to the judges, teams, attendees, DCU and the Manning School of Business. We can’t wait to see how these innovative ideas develop!