Developers, representatives of Fintech Start-ups and Software Companies, "out of the box" thinkers, as well as employees of UniCredit applied to the initiative and gathered in 12 international teams. Selected participants came from Albania, Austria, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Turkey, and even Japan.

Leveraging on the new PSD2 regulation, by which all EU financial institutions will have to provide third parties direct access to their customers' accounts, the Hackathon challenge was: "How client account information can be used to improve customer experience and create value both for our customers and the bank". Participants would develop , for example, apps and platforms to analyse client data, and while doing that provide better customer experience.

Winning teams were selected on Sunday 3rd September at the end of the intensive two-day competition and will present their projects to the top management of the CEE Division with the opportunity to be part of the teams implementing the solutions.

They are:

1st place (awarded 5.000 EUR)
Emre Erol, Turkey
Gün Makinabakan, Turkey
Cahit Taşkın, Turkey
Recep Tiryaki, Turkey
Tanja Arsenijevic, Serbia (UniCredit Bank Serbia)
Nikolina Cvitanovic, Croatia (Zagrebačka Banka)
Todor Kondev, Bulgary (UniCredit Bulbank)

2nd place (awarded 3.500 EUR)
Petra Fon, Slovenia
Boštjan Pišler, Slovenia
Ivan Litsvinenka, Italy
Aleksander Zaras, Poland (UniCredit Business Integrated Solutions)
Aron Nemeth, Hungary (UniCredit Bank Hungary)
Gabor Koros, Hungary (UniCredit Bank Hungary)

3rd place (awarded 1.500 EUR)
Iztok Sebič, Slovenia
Giuseppe Guarnieri, Italy
Alessandro Panza, Italy
Amadej Tauses, Slovenia
Marina Sinitsyna, Russia (UniCredit Bank Russia)
Alisa Tarada, Russia (UniCredit Bank Russia)

Sergio Marino, Board Member, UniCredit Banka Slovenija d.d. said: "Many great ideas connected to the PSD2 challenge were presented by the groups on the last day of the Hackathon; some already highly developed, others at a starting point. Having a consistent business case, a working demo, the presentation itself and the creativeness of the idea were the main items reviewed when selecting the winners. Although UniCredit Hackathon CEE is over, it does not actually end up here. The best teams will present their creative idea to the CEE Division top management and could be part of our teams when implementing the solution."

Francesco Vercesi, Head of Agile for CEE at UniCredit Group, added: "The UniCredit Hackathon CEE gave us the opportunity to see what people coming from different backgrounds can do together, developing ideas that can be put in practice later. At UniCredit, we believe in innovation and in this context we adopted an Agile framework that promotes a new way of working and better responds to a fast-changing environment. This approach, whereby various teams collaborate to deliver early and repeatedly, helped frame the UniCredit Hackathon CEE itself. We are proud today of the outcome delivered, and congratulate the winning teams.