Inspiration
Its Great
FinConnect is driven by the idea that everyone deserves access to the tools and knowledge to manage their finances, regardless of background or circumstances. Too often, people in rural areas, low-income families, immigrant communities, young adults, and other underserved groups face barriers to understanding and accessing the financial systems that can improve their lives. They may feel lost or disconnected from traditional financial institutions. Many financial services fail to provide accessible educational opportunities to those who need them most. FinConnect bridges this gap by empowering individuals with the knowledge and tools necessary to navigate personal finance confidently, creating ripples of change that reach and support underserved communities.
FinConnect is all about making financial services more accessible, especially for people who don't always get the support they need. We were inspired by HackUTD’s “ripple effect”—how small actions can create big change. For us, the shark "fin" symbolizes determination and focus, helping people stay on track with their financial goals like loans, insurance, and investments. We’ve designed our website with ripples in mind, reflecting how each step can lead to a bigger, positive impact.
What it does
An innovative financial platform designed to empower underserved individuals by simplifying personal finance. This user-friendly web application mimics a traditional bank account while offering additional features that guide users toward loans, investments, or insurance options. Through an interactive quiz, the platform personalizes recommendations and connects users to companies that best suit their needs. It also serves as an educational tool for those without access to conventional financial systems.
How we built it
We built our platform using Python and Flask for the backend, paired with a MySQL database to store and manage our extensive data. The application leverages a REST API to connect the front-end and back-end, ensuring smooth interactions between the user interface and the underlying systems. The core feature of the platform is the personalized quizzes, which guide users through questions tailored to three key categories: loans, investments, and insurance. By answering these quizzes, users are matched with specific companies and services based on their unique responses, helping them make informed financial decisions.
The data behind the platform is stored in a MySQL database, which includes detailed information about each company, such as company name, plan types, costs, reviews, and more. To provide personalized results, we implemented an AI-driven Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) model, which pulls relevant information from the database rather than relying on general knowledge. Additionally, we used entity recognition models to categorize and organize data more effectively, allowing the platform to connect users with the most appropriate services. By linking all components through unique IDs for each company and category, we ensured a seamless and tailored experience for every user.
Challenges we ran into
Over the past 24 hours, we had many ups and downs. Some of them include creating a refining idea so it meets the challenge requirements, pulling back relevant data and combining it with the recommendations with the quiz questions and having our laptops break down 4 hours prior to submission.
In order to create a refining idea that met the challenge requirements, we tried to find a solution that targeted the traditional banking systems but allowed the user to gain educational resources based on the location that they lived in and their answers to the insurance, loan, and investment questions. Throughout this entire process we talked to both the Goldman Sachs Team and the Infosys Team to get a good understanding of the expectations required by both companies while making sure to bounce off innovative ideas with leaders in the technology field.
In order to combat the challenge of bringing back relevant data based on quiz questions, the first thing we needed to do was research over 60 various companies and what they had to offer to our customers. Then we had to link all the responses given by the user towards the categories that were in our data set that directly correlated towards the company. Finally, our biggest challenge with the implementation of the quiz was taking our database and moving it to MySQL, and building the recommendation model.
Fours hours before submission 2 of our computers decided to breakdown and we could not get Python to function, nor were we able to push anything to Git Hub. This was a major challenge for us because we had already worked over 18 hours towards the project and the systems we were using were starting to shut down. In order to combat this challenge we had to redownload all our software onto new devices and reconfigure the entire system.
Even though we went through a bundle of challenges, we still were able to successfully create FinConnect!
Accomplishments that we're proud of
While we had a "few" challenges, with them came enormous accomplishments. Every few hours we would hear "We are back in business Baby" and everyone was really joyful. Some of the biggest accomplishments we were able to do during this year's hackathon Ripple Effect was creating a really smooth, and effective UI Design, Creating a RAG AI and bring able to create a manual data set and merge it with MySQL.
What we learned
This was the first hackathon for half our team, so there was so much knowledge transfer that occurred over the last 24 hours. Some of the biggest things we learned was to not use devices that are a little older, how to remove a background from a gif, how to animate an image using AI, how to create a basic banking service, and finally how to implement our fully hand-coded recommendation model.
What's next for FinConnect
Currently, FinConnect was created to target local communities. Given more time we would like to expand our resources to a multinational level. This will allow people in other rural/ underdeveloped countries gain access to easy financial services.
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