iM Financial Group wraps up youth talent development hackathon

iM Financial Group held the final hackathon of the "4th National Youth Talent Development Project — iM:POSSIBLE Challenger" on Friday and Saturday at Hotel Interbulgo Exco in Daegu, selecting the top winning teams, the group announced Thursday.

Sponsored by the Financial Supervisory Service, the competition challenges university students to build working proof-of-concept models for AI agent-based financial services. Now in its fourth year since launching in 2022, this year's edition strengthened its AI agent education component. The competition expanded its eligibility nationwide last year.

A total of 203 teams comprising 372 participants applied during the preliminary registration period in June. After a document screening and four weeks of specialized training, 11 teams and 24 participants advanced to the final round, where they completed overnight development sessions and team presentations. Final rankings were determined by combining presentation scores, training attendance and bonus points for financial consumer protection.

The grand prize went to the University of Seoul team "Upossible," which developed a service that automatically calculates climate risks — including flood depth and structural vulnerability of collateral — to support loan screening.

Seoul National University's "YdeaBank" team took the excellence award for developing "iM With You," an AI assistant designed to help youth aging out of the foster care system manage their daily lives. Yeungnam University's "iMAX" team won the merit award for "iM SmartQ," a QR-based web service that reduces waiting times at bank branches.

Chungbuk National University's "IM:SIGHT" team received an encouragement award for "iM SIGHT," a corporate finance support service connecting business subsidy discovery with environmental, social and governance performance management. A joint team from Soongsil University and the University of Seoul, "Possible Squad," won the special financial consumer protection award for "iM Hamseong," an AI management consulting service for small business owners.

Prize money is 10 million won ($7,310) for the grand prize, 5 million won for the excellence award, and 3 million won each for the merit, encouragement and special awards. The three teams that won the grand prize, excellence award and merit award will also receive an invitation to attend the Singapore Fintech Festival in November, along with on-site corporate training opportunities.

All winners will be exempt from the document screening stage when applying for positions at iM Financial Group affiliates, including iM Bank, iM Securities, iM Life, iM Capital and iM Asset Management.

"Watching university students build fully functional financial services in such a short time confirmed the potential of future finance talent," iM Financial Group Chairman Hwang Byung-woo said. "We will lead the way in discovering talent who can bridge AI and finance, and in spreading the value of inclusive finance."