Insurance Management Students Win Gold at WinterHack 2022

A team of Insurance Management students captured first place in Cookhouse Labs' first-ever national 'Design Thinking Ideathon' conducted in partnership with the Insurance Institute of Canada (IIC).

Cookhouse Labs is Canada’s first insurtech innovation lab that creates a community of innovators focusing on the insurance industry from around the globe to develop solutions tackling current and future challenges of the industry.

The Ideathon is a competitive event with a fixed time limit where participants team up with industry peers to solve a specific real-world problem through exciting rounds of innovation and ideation, using the Design Thinking methodology. The event took place both virtually and in-person in Toronto.

Design Thinking Ideathon participants included Centennial College, Mohawk College, Conestoga College, Saskatchewan Polytechnic, the University of Toronto, the University of Calgary, McMaster University, and the British Columbia Institute of Technology.

Humber College's Insurance Management team consisted of Mateen Hosseiny, Michael Running, Harsh Gotmani, Sneha Jasapara, Labdhi Shah, Ajinkya Ghorpade, Kelly McWhinnie, and Ayush Singal.

Students were given 48 hours to propose a solution to one of the four challenges presented. The challenge the Humber team chose was to devise an innovative way to reduce/prevent the impact of wildfires. Their solution was to use genetically modified trees that burn slower than typical trees in order to decrease the amount of damage caused.

Judges assessed the presentations based on the level of innovation (20%); business value, including reputational value or its impact on a company’s profitability or combined ratio (30%); methodology (10%); the ‘coolness' factor (20%); and feasibility (20%).

The Insurance Management program faculty are proud of the students and their first-place accomplishment.

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