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1. Looking To The Future: Nations Trust Bank Establishes Innovation Lab, Will Host First Ever
Fintech Hackathon
Sri Lanka’s first innovation centre in the financial services sector has recently been launched by
Nations Trust Bank, as part of their ongoing commitment to bringing futuristic solutions and
customerexperiencesto the industry.
An innovation centre is essentially a dream lab, a place to test and turn dreams into reality. Nations
Trust has created the perfect environment for inspiration and ideation at their “Kaffeine Lab”,
located at Gregory’s Road. The major goal is to open the bank’s systems up to developers and
enthusiasts so that they may use Nations Trust Bank’s existing infrastructure to build new fintech
productsand serviceswhichcanbe deliveredviathe bank’sownplatformsorvia3rd
party platforms.
The key objectives of the Kaffeine Lab is to actively engage and collaborate with other ecosystems
such as non financial sector industries, academics, start-ups and the customers themselves to solve
real customer problems, enhancing customer experience through disruptive digital transformation,
radically changing the operating and business models in the financial services industry and to foster
a strong innovative and digital culture within Nations Trust by working closely with all internal
stakeholdersto prototype,pilotandimplementsolutionswhichtransformsthe waythe bank works.
Discussing the innovation centre, Renuka Fernando – CEO of Nations Trust Bank said that, ‘The
Kaffeine Lab is yet another milestone in the Bank’s journey to bring the future to our customers.
With the rapid advancement and adoption of technology globally, it is reallyimportant for us to keep
pace with the changing global landscape, otherwise we will become irrelevant in the lives of our
customers. This is a springboard to becoming a future ready bank. We also want to be an incubator
to foster our country’s fantastic talent, especially within the Fintech space. So far in the financial
sector, there has never been a platform for people with ideas to collaborate, design and build what
they envision. Our Kaffeine Lab will provide that platform for developing ideas into useable
products, services and tools. This is the thinking behind the Fintech hackathon we have organized.
We’re providing a space to work on ideas and develop them in to something useful with minimal
resources,whilebringingpeople fromdifferentbackgrounds tocollaboratetogether.’
The first initiative of the Nations Trust Innovation Lab is Sri Lanka’s first fintechhackathon, which has
been organized in collaboration with the University of Moratuwa – Faculty of IT and the Sri Lanka
Association for Artificial Intelligence (SLAAI), while connecting with other institutions such as the
universities of Peradeniya, Sabaragamuwa and Jaffna, along with other private educational
institutions. The hackathon, which will be held on the 10th
of November 2017 at the Kaffeine Lab,
will see geeks and tech professionals from different backgrounds bring their ideas together to
compete and create meaningful solutions. The focus of the event will be conceptualizing real life
problems in the financial services sector and coming up with solutions to them. The Nations Trust
FintechHackathon will see 10 to 15 teams competing for significant 3 cash prizes of Rs.250,000/-,Rs.
150,000/- and Rs.75,000/- with attractive lending propositions of up to LKR 1 million for the best
teamto helpthemfinance theirideasandbuildsuccessfulbusinesses.

2. Dinesh Thomas, the Chief Innovation Officer at Nations Trust Bank elaborated on the hackathon and
what it hopes to achieve,‘Hackathons are largely unheard of in Sri Lanka but it’s time we caught up
with our global peers. Hackathon events are organized around the world by leading organizations
and see diverse groups of professionals and enthusiasts from various disciplines and backgrounds
come together to create unique, game changing solutions. The Nations Trust FinTechHackathon is an
attempt to bring Sri Lankans from different backgrounds together and create a melting pot of ideas
and innovative thinking and hopefully make some truly beneficially disruptive ideas bear fruit. We’re
excited about both the innovation lab and the Hackathon and are sure they will change the game
many times going forward. In fact, we have just launched the official Nations Trust
FinTechHackathonwebsite,whichcanbe accessedat www.fintechack.com
‘Sri Lanka is a deep and vibrant pool of talent.Very often, however, ideas are raw and those with
ideas need mentors to turn their ideas into successful businesses. This is one of the most important
functions of the Innovation Lab, to provide mentorship and guidance, for example, in marketing,
business and strategizing. The Nations Trust FintechHackathon is a callout to the brilliant talent we
have in this country and there will be no limit to creativity as solutions can be delivered through the
web, mobile, IOT, augmented reality or any other platform as long as it is related to financial
services. Sri Lanka’s financial sector lags behind in terms of development and integration and the
onlywayforwardis fornewideasto come inand for usto openour doorsand mindsto feedback.
Nations Trust Bank PLC is amongst the top 25 business establishments in Sri Lanka, ranked by
Business Today Magazine and is the benchmark for customer convenience, ably providing a host of
financial products and services to a wide range of customers. Nations Trust is also the bank behind
Sri Lanka’s first fully digital banking and payment platform, FriMi. The bank operates 93 branches
across the country, boasting an ATMnetwork covering 137 locations plus more than 3,500 ATMs on
the Lanka Pay Networkandisthe issuerandsole acquirerforAmericanExpress® CardsinSri Lanka.