NatWest hacks digital solutions for The Prince’s Trust

One involved its Get Hired recruitment platform and the other attempted to encourage more 16-30 year olds to begin a start-up.

In just six hours, the teams produced various results and prototypes, which were then presented to a judging panel. The bank considered which concepts to take forward, promising to develop the winning idea further.

Vicky Yorke, innovation project lead at The Prince’s Trust, said: “This was such an important event for us and we are really grateful to the people from NatWest who gave up their normal job for the day to apply their expertise to our challenges."

"This type of rapid prototyping is invaluable to a business like The Prince’s Trust, as we don’t have the resources to get ideas off the ground quickly. This hackathon has given us a wealth of potential solutions that could be turned into real products that will boost the services we provide.”

NatWest is increasingly looking for ways to practice sustainability; the bank previously partnered with The Prince’s Trust previously after seeing an opportunity to help drive more young people to its platforms.

For this event, ORM followed its tried and tested hackathon process, where two business challenges are set in advance and teams form based on their preference of which one to work on.

The teams were made up of NatWest employees, young people from The Prince’s Trust Get Hired platform and developers from the likes of Westminster University and Code Mortals.

Michael Woodward, strategic engagement & development manager on Natwest's digital team, said: “This hackathon was a great exercise in bringing different people together from both our business and outside. The range of skill-sets that each team comprised of was just staggering and I was really impressed by the pitches at the end of the day."

"It was completely voluntary for people from NatWest and we’ve been really inspired by the commitment to the business ideas they produced. We hope to run more events like this in the future, as they’re a great way to get creativity flowing.”

ORM runs hackathons for individual businesses and across sectors. Click here to find out and get involved.