National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) hosted the NBK RPA Hackathon, the very first RPA (Robotic Process Automation) hackathon in the region. This online hackathon was in collaboration with Blue Prism, where participants were challenged to improve the bank’s operational efficiency and service quality through automation.
Since NBK’s automation journey began four years ago – dozens of processes have been automated throughout the bank – creating a digital workforce that excels at speed and accuracy. Currently, NBK’s intelligent automation lab uses RPA bots to automate routine tasks in the domains of card processing, compliance, fraud detection and more. NBK has since been named a leader in the RPA category by Gartner for three years in a row.
NBK’s RPA team and Blue Prism’s developers welcomed and encouraged participants to kick start the day. Hackathon participants received their challenges to show their automation skills and deliver the best possible automation solution to impress the jury. These projects were then evaluated by both NBK and Blue Prism executives. Awards included cash prizes and potential opportunities to join NBK’s RPA team. During the hackathon day, participants tackled their challenges using Blue Prism’s online platform and were tasked to submit their projects by the end of the day.
On this occasion, Mohammad Al-Kharafi, General Manager, Head of Group Operations at National Bank of Kuwait said “With the NBK RPA Hackathon, we sought to both enrich the efforts of our automation processes as well as attract international talent to expand our RPA team. Certified Blue Prism developers from all over the world were encouraged to answer our challenges and participate in the online event. In addition to providing opportunities to join the RPA team, we are recruiting fresh graduate Kuwaitis and are developing them to become experts in this new domain”
Al-Kharafi noted that “The demand for RPA in financial services has continued to increase; with the COVID-19 pandemic acting as a catalyst for this in recent times. The growth for automation has been immense, and is projected to continue growing over the next decade. As NBK, we are keen to invest in automating our processes and increase our work force in this field by hiring top-skilled RPA developers. Congratulations to all the winners on their well-deserved success and well done to all participants.”
