Beyond Chatbots: Advanced Consumer Complaints Analytics Hackathon

Through the Cambridge SupTech Lab, we Digital Transformation Solutions collaborated with the Alliance for Innovative Regulation to implement the SupTech Hackathon 2023: “Beyond Chatbots: Consumer Complaints Analytics.”

This event, held virtually from July 26 to August 4, 2023 convened data scientists, innovators, and technologists from around the globe. The overarching goal was to harness their expertise to effect positive change in the realms of financial consumer protection and market conduct. Focusing on this year’s theme, the hackathon solicited innovative solutions to empower financial supervisory agencies with the capability to extract actionable insights from consumer complaints and supervisory data. Notably, the event spotlighted advanced analytics of complaint data sourced from governmental portals, alongside the potential of innovative chatbot technologies.

This online hackathon was geared toward teams or individuals with skills in data science and analysis, business analysis, product management, software development, database administration, data visualisation, team leaders, and/or other skills valuable in exploring solutions using advanced technology.

Additionally, teams were supported by financial supervision and regulation experts who have in-depth knowledge about the challenges that financial authorities, regulators and supervisors face in collecting and utilising consumer complaint data.

The hackathon drew participation from a wide array of global stakeholders, representing 14 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Peru, Singapore, United Kingdom and United States of America.

During this hackathon we explored existing customer complaint’s data (shared by partnering financial authorities) and the standardisation of data schemas to identify trends, correlations and patterns with the goal of generating useful information for both consumers and the financial authorities. As a result, financial authorities were able to shift towards data-driven decision-making, proactive issue resolution, customer-centric service and standardised processes to strengthen their supervisory capabilities, enabling them to effectively safeguard and empower financial consumers.

Teams generated innovative solutions that addressed the following needs:

1. Data Exploration and Analysis

• Develop algorithms or techniques to identify patterns, correlations, and anomalies in consumer complaint data
• Uncover hidden connections and commonalities among complaints that may indicate systemic issues or unethical practices
• Implement data mining and machine learning approaches to uncover valuable insights beyond complaint classification
• Build visualisation tools to present findings and facilitate a deeper understanding of underlying issues and customer behaviors
• Design methods to identify early warning signs of harm and instability in order to enhance consumer protection and improve industry practices

2. Data Limitations And Detection Capabilities

• Identify and address limitations in the available data that may hinder the detection of systemic risk assessment
• Evaluate the capabilities of the existing data sources and propose improvements or alternative data collection methods
• Implement data cleansing and preprocessing techniques to ensure data quality and reliability

3. Optimised Data Schema

• Define a core set of parameters for a consumer complaint data schema that enables efficient consumer resolution and fosters useful analytics
• Identify the structure and anatomy of a complaint to determine the essential fields for comprehensive data collection and analysis
• Consider barriers to entry and completion when designing the data schema to reduce abandoned complaints.

Judging criteria

Judges assessed creativity and innovation, speed to market, and how transformative the solution could be. More specifically, given that our primary goal was to drive ecosystem-wide exploration of the data and a diversity of insights and results, we identified solutions that stand out across several factors, including:

• Value for financial regulation supervisors: Complaints systems necessarily involve value for the supervisors who interact with and use these systems daily, and who will be available during the week to advise
• Value for financial institutions and end users of financial services: Top solutions should explicitly identify hypotheses as to how their approaches could lead to increased value for supervised entities and financial citizens.
• Incorporation of available data: Top solutions will have used all provided datasets, referencing gaps and particularly useful data points where applicable
• Solution feasibility: A key component of the top solutions will be to explicitly discuss feasibility of the technical approach, as well as considering the process of integration in rolling out these solutions

Novelty: Uniqueness of the approach within the suptech space will also be considered in evaluating results

Incentives and benefits for participants

Solutions that are identified as having stood out were:

• Spotlighted in our websites and communication gaining exposure to potential sponsors and partners
• Featured during SupTech Week, a global event hosted by the Cambridge SupTech Lab in the Fall 2023
• Considered for prototyping and deployment in partnership with financial authorities through the Cambridge SupTech Lab Launchpad
• Showcased to fellow data scientists and technologists in the Data for Good community

Awards

Central to the event was a panel discussion that explored the importance of harnessing customer data to enhance consumer protection. The panel deliberated on strategies to overcome the challenges hindering the implementation of solutions in this domain. Esteemed members of the panel included Jo Ann Barefoot, CEO & Co-Founder of the Alliance for Innovative Regulation, as the Panel Chair. The culmination of the hackathon witnessed the recognition of outstanding contributions through a set of awards. Chaired by Matt Grasser, the panel of judges, comprised of industry leaders, evaluated the prototypes submitted by participants. Three distinct awards were conferred:

1. Breakthrough Award: Recognising the prototype most poised for deployment into production and use by financial regulatory authorities

2. Eureka Award: Celebrating the prototype that captured the judges’ attention through its creativity and ingenuity

3. Jump Award: Honoring the prototype with the highest potential to drive transformative change in regulatory oversight and supervision, resulting in a significant leap forward

With the successful conclusion of the hackathon, which boasted the participation of 40 hackers across 5 teams, as well as an audience representing approximately 90 regulated entities from diverse corners of the world, the event achieved its intended impact. The innovative ideas and presentations generated during the hackathon will be thoughtfully reviewed and potentially incorporated into future initiatives by the Cambridge SupTech Lab and Digital Transformation Solutions.

Watch the Demo Day video of the SupTech Hackathon 2023 Beyond Chatbots: Advanced Consumer Complaints Analytics https://lab.ccaf.io/video/beyond-chatbots-suptech-hackathon-2023-demo-day/