Inspiration
We all are concerned about the economy, and specifically the issue of long-term goals seeming daunting. 65% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, only being able to think short-term on any decision because they don't know of the options available to them, or are unable to take advantage of them.
What it does
IFinance provides users with recommendation, insights, and plans to take advantage of their rewards programs through their banks to reach their goals. We automatically push rewards programs available to a user that they can be used to improve their financial wellness, help them towards their short-term and long-term goals, and provide insights into the usefulness of their rewards. Users can also define goals that they'd like to work towards, and our AI builds a custom financial plan based on a user's situation, and also provides recommendations to other rewards programs available to them from their bank that could help them in their situation.
How we built it
We built a High-Fidelity mockup using Figma. We have started a full-stack web application using Next.js, Python, and Go, allowing us to use modern technologies that provide high maintainability given their popularity, and scalability given their continuous growth.
Challenges we ran into
Being able to challenge the status-quo whilst also trying to accomplish the mission statement was difficult. Our project looks to improve and optimize the wheel, rather than restructure it.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Our solution bridges the information gap, allowing users to easily and instantly have access to opportunities. We believe this project to specifically help those that have no time to visit a bank, or are afraid to look at their finances, and show them that their goals are possible and that the tools handed to them by SCU, or whatever situation they are in.
What we learned
To build a financial app for Americans, we must rely heavily on a user providing us accurate, and sufficient data for our model to create well constructed plans. This means we must rely on banks to provide our service with the necessary information, and we have not had the time yet to think too much about that, rather we have focused on a proof-of-concept.
What's next for UFinance
This project is being built as a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), meaning we sell our service to banks, and will rely on integrations from banks for user information to allow our AI to provide recommendations, insights, and plans based off user's goals and financial information. This project will be grown to join loan planning (repayments, outlooks), investments, and long-term and short-term goals, creating realistic approaches to improve the financial wellness of users.
As a Software Consultancy club, Tech Startup Club offers tangible work experience to students, in a time where finding internships is harder than ever. IFinance offers an opportunity for students to work on solutions to real-life problems, and provides banks the visibility for their products to used effectively, improving trust and usage of their products.
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