This year the Challenge was to present an innovative idea that helps businesses meet their regulatory obligations while also enhancing the customer experience.

“We would like to thank all start-ups and scale-up businesses who took part in the Challenge,” Westpac Head of Innovation, Kate Cooper, said.

“The calibre of this year’s applications was outstanding. We were impressed by the variety of solutions put forward, from workflow automation tools to artificial intelligence insights and data analysis tools,” she said.

The solutions were required to address one of three areas: responding to regulatory change, customer privacy and consent or product management.

The five finalists are:

Certitude ID: creates software for the "privatised" revolution, where previously sensitive data can be shared without fear of compromising users’ privacy. This is done through "look alike" copies of sensitive datasets which contain randomly generated people with many of the same attributes and demographics as the real people.

Daisee: Deep Artificial Intelligence Software for Enterprise Ecosystems or daisee is bridging the gap between technical AI and commercial application in the fields of vision and voice. It focuses on creating significant value for clients by blending commercial best practice, software engineering and data science.

Lucidity: a fintech start-up specialising in intelligent digitalisation of trade finance operations. Lucidity offers a solution called xpertDOX that automates the process of regulatory and compliance screening of trade documents, which helps to reduce the effort, time and costs associated with manual or paper-based document checking.

Priviti: patented technology and solutions to systemise and manage granular consent for data sharing at scale. Its software enables banks to obtain, verify and match consent between multiple parties with audit trails for regulatory compliance, dispute resolution and analytics. Priviti allows users to have full control of their data.

UserCentric PL: flexible "Next Best Action" platform to help companies automate their compliance workflows. The solution helps bridge the gap between visibility of compliance matters, and taking action on identified issues, by guiding users through an easy-to-use workflow and managing escalation alerts.

The finalists will pitch their idea to a panel of business experts, including Deborah Young, CEO of RegTech Association of Australia, who will decide the winner at an event on Monday, 3 December 2018.

The winner will receive a $40,000 cash prize and professional support to grow their business.