EIS Hackathon 2024: Pushing Boundaries with AI and Innovation

At EIS, ambition and innovation are in our DNA, and the 2024 EIS AWS Gen AI Hackathon proved it. 

This event wasn’t just a challenge‌ — ‌it was a celebration of creativity, teamwork, and the endless possibilities of AI-driven insurance solutions. With 26 teams, over 135 participants, and groundbreaking projects, we turned ideas into actionable developments. 

The Backstory: A Journey Fueled by Passion for Insurance Technology

The hackathon emerged from a mix of necessity and opportunity. 

With survey feedback highlighting innovation gaps, AWS partnered with us, offering immersive AI workshops to ignite our team’s creativity. Over 300 employees voluntarily attended these sessions, gaining a crash course in cutting-edge AI technology.

From ideation to execution, the hackathon showcased collaboration at its finest. Participants worked across time zones, forming dynamic teams, submitting 26 projects, and blowing our judges out of the water.

The Judging Framework: A Fair, Rigorous Process

The projects submitted from the hackathon were just judged‌ through a multifaceted lens:

• Complexity: How challenging was the problem tackled?
• Innovation: Did the idea push the boundaries of what’s possible?
• Presentation: Was the business value of the project clear and beneficial?
• Execution: How complete and functional was the project?
• EIS Technical Fit: How well did it align with our technology ecosystem?

Judges included our CEO, Alec Miloslavsky, our CTO, Mike Dwyer, and SVPs from heads of our product teams. 

The Winners Circle: Game-Changing AI Innovations for Insurers

It was a hard choice, but ultimately three projects won:

• 🥇 First Place: Dream Team — Smart Quote Generator 
  • This tool generates competitive quotes by extracting insights from competitor policy documents. This innovative solution demonstrates the power of AI in streamlining the quoting process and improving competitiveness.
• 🥈 Second Place: Panda Team — AI Demand Management Optimization Tool for Business Analysts 
  • This tool empowers business analysts with AI-driven analysis, generating INVEST-compliant user stories to streamline demand management.
• 🥉 Third Place: Billing Olympus — BillBrain AI Co-Pilot 
  • A smart assistant that revolutionizes the billing setup process with natural, chat-based interactions.

Best in Category Winners: Innovation Across the Board

Because the projects delivered were so impressive, our judges decided to also award best in category along with the top three:

• SaaS: An AI assistant to validate test environments, recommend further analysis when needed, and assess deployment states post-regression, performance, or batch testing.
• Business Impact:This project aims to develop an AI-driven solution that autonomously adjusts insurance rate factors, using a chatbot to analyze data and update factors in OpenL.
• Ready to Use: An AI-driven tool that provides contextual UI guidance and tips based on user profiles, enhancing learning, onboarding, and product knowledge with document and wiki integration.
• Developer Tooling: A chatbot using NLP and semantic search to simplify API discovery, enabling users to ask plain-language questions and receive precise, relevant documentation.

Beyond the Hackathon: What’s Next?

The event wasn’t just a one-off celebration. It was a springboard for integrating AI-driven solutions into EIS OneSuite. Under the guidance of Stephen Price, our new AI architect, these ideas are being evaluated for potential implementation into our roadmap, giving a brighter, more innovative future for our technology and our customers.

A Final Word

The 2024 EIS Hackathon was more than a competition‌ — ‌it was a testament to what happens when you dedicate the power of smart minds to figure out the best way to harness new technologies. (In this case, AI.) With AWS’s support, our team’s dedication, and a company-wide culture of ambition, we’re redefining the possibilities of insurance technology. 

Ready to see what comes next? Stay tuned!

 

 

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