AFAC Financial Intelligence Competition Connects AI Talent with Real-World Finance Challenges

AFAC Financial Intelligence Competition: Bridging AI and Finance

Financial technology is evolving with AI at its core, and initiatives like the AFAC Financial Intelligence Competition are cultivating new AI talent focused on real-world finance challenges. Launched by Ant Group alongside top universities such as Peking University, Nanyang Technological University, and the University of Hong Kong, AFAC is now entering its third year as a key platform where AI meets practical financial problems.

AFAC invites university students and researchers globally to tackle actual issues faced by the financial industry. Unlike typical hackathons, this competition offers problem sets sourced directly from corporate challenges and encourages teams to create AI-driven solutions. According to Dawei Cheng, associate professor at Tongji University, the competition connects academic learning with industry application, allowing students to test algorithms in real enterprise environments.

Developer Track and Startup Track

The competition features two tracks: Developer and Startup. Both focus on real financial scenarios, reflecting current trends in digital finance.

• Forecasting subscription and redemption cycles for funds: Predicting investor behavior is crucial for liquidity management in wealth management, especially in volatile markets.
• Cross-validating insurance policies from multiple data sources: Ensuring consistency across various systems helps reduce fraud and operational risks amid the insurance sector’s digital transformation.
• Optimizing long-chain reasoning in financial decision-making: Compressing complex reasoning chains enhances automation and explainability in investment and credit decisions, aligning with growing regulatory demands.
• Generating multimodal financial reports with AI agents: Combining text, tables, and charts, AI-generated reports aim to speed up analyst workflows, a trend gaining traction in capital markets.

The Startup Track encourages university entrepreneurs to propose AI-driven business solutions within four key themes:

• Enhancing productivity in financial services: Innovations that automate knowledge work or boost digital productivity, an area attracting strong venture capital interest.
• Promoting inclusive finance: Expanding access to financial services for underbanked populations using AI tools like alternative credit scoring and micro-insurance platforms.
• Advancing financial data utilization: Extracting and summarizing structured and unstructured financial data with AI to generate actionable insights.
• Supporting elderly financial services: Developing fintech solutions for aging populations, including voice interfaces, fraud alerts, and personalized retirement planning.

Startup participants must submit demos along with commercialization plans, reflecting the competition’s focus on practical viability. Ant Group’s deep involvement in AI and finance ensures that solutions have a strong applied orientation.

The Role of AI in Education and Industry

Dawei Cheng and student participant Zhu from Tongji University highlight both the benefits and limits of generative AI tools like ChatGPT. Zhu notes that AI improves coding efficiency but does not replace fundamental thinking. He emphasizes that top teams often combine expertise in computer science, finance, and management, enabling them to handle complex, domain-specific challenges effectively.

Competitions like AFAC also signal a shift in collaboration between universities and tech companies. By working on real challenges from Ant Group’s financial ecosystem, participants gain valuable insights into integrating AI with finance.

The AFAC competition is part of the 2025 Inclusion·Conference on the Bund, a platform showcasing AI applications in financial services. Finalists will present their projects on stage in Shanghai, with awards announced in front of global industry leaders. This event supports international collaboration and career development in digital finance markets.

For finance professionals interested in expanding their AI skills, exploring targeted AI courses can provide practical knowledge to engage with innovations like those presented in AFAC. Resources such as Complete AI Training’s courses by job role offer valuable learning paths.