Students from York University’s Schulich School of Business and the Department of Economics earned the first-place and third-place prizes in a case competition on Feb. 22.
The Economics Student Association (ESA) at York University teamed up with the Royal Bank of Canada to put on the ESA x RBC Case Competition at the Second Student Centre on the Keele Campus.
Twenty student teams from Wilfred Laurier, York University, Ryerson and the University of Toronto presented their ideas and competed for cash prizes including $500 for first place, $250 for second place and $100 for third place.
The student-organized event offered hands-on experience by asking teams to clone a business domain where they solve a case study, emulate industry practices, apply their technical and classroom knowledge, and ultimately make recommendations to a mock board of directors.
The topic for the event, the second annual ASA x RBC Case Competition, was open banking. Open banking makes it easier for customers to switch banks and products, but it also requires many banks to have access to customer data, which raises important privacy concerns.
Teams were tasked with evaluating the effect of open banking among Canadian banks and customers. In the final round of presentations, student teams presented before a panel of six judges and audience members. Four of the judges were senior members of the Digital Products department at the Royal Bank of Canada, who had very generously volunteered their time: Benoit Germain, Tia Lo, Buket Holzemann, and Sunayna Ali. The remaining judges were two professors from the Department of Economics: Robert McKeown and Tsvetanka Karagyozova.
Maliha Farhad, ESA’s vice-president of marketing, noted “we had a great deal of interest from students this year. Registration was full before the deadline.”
The event included a lunch, and a presentation delivered by Lior Grimberg, assistant branch manager at RBC on York University’s Keele Campus, on how best to manage money.
This year’s winning teams were:
- First place – The RBC(uties) from the Schulich School of Business: Mehak Shah, Aashna Appa, Amira Ahmad and Hibah Rehman
- Second place – The Three Supremos from the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto, St. George Campus: Wajahat Naqvi and Aaranya Barman
- Third place – Team Lightning from York University’s Department of Economics in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies: Dilomi Cooray and Alia Tareq Rashed
The ESA executive team members are Maliha Farhad (vice-president marketing), Ella Demchuk (vice-president finance), Insha Ranjwani (vice-president competitions) (LP), Varshikha Bhardwaj (vice-president externals), Jack Hughson (vice-president internals) and Aneri Patel (president).