How would you use technology to improve the financial services industry?

That’s the challenge Manulife put out to Ontario post-secondary students in early September when it announced its Smart Tech Challenge competition.

It came to an end on Saturday, as five finalist teams pitched in front of a judges’ panel that included Mike Kirkup, UW’s Velocity Director; Jeff Nesbitt, Communitech’s VP of Enterprise and Innovation; and Manulife Canada CEO Marianne Harrison.

“I thought it was a great event today; seeing the five presentations and how innovative and creative they are,” Harrison said. “They are really thinking outside of the box and [of] what it takes to move the financial industry.”

The finalists were chosen from 40 entrants from across Ontario who submitted 60-second video pitches. They included:

    • Datify from Wilfrid Laurier University
    • VerifyMe! from Queen's University
    • ReceiptHub from Wilfrid Laurier University
    • Change from York University
    • Moola from University of Waterloo


Datify’s Chris Clark, Rochelle Fainchtein and Anastasia Martynovitch took home the $12,000 cheque, Macbooks and a paid work term at Manulife’s RED (Research Exploration Development) Lab in the Communitech Hub.

Their idea is to use health trackers like the Fitbit to help consumers speed up the life insurance application process, and reduce premiums by giving access to the data collected by health trackers.

“I like Datify from the perspective of buying insurance with wellness,” said Harrison, adding that, “I think the concept that they had in terms of monitoring ongoing wellness and having that impact your premiums is a great idea.”

Saturday was a whirlwind for the five finalist teams, as they started early practicing with a mentor.

For Clark, an intern with Communitech’s Startup Services Group, this was his first time pitching, and having mentor Matt Gardner, co-founder of Videostream, made the difference.

“I learned how important mentors are; if we didn’t have Matt, there is no possible way that we could have gotten first [place],” Clark said. “I think it’s also important for whatever you want to do in life, to know someone who knows the ins and outs of how to be successful in what you’re doing.”

Manulife’s lab at the Communitech Hub attracted these three Wilfrid Laurier students to apply.

“We were interested in what we could come up with,” said Martynovitch. “We knew about the potential to work at the RED Lab, which is super exciting, because it’s so new and there is just so much potential, so many opportunities and so much freedom there.”

This kind of reaction is what drove Manulife to reach out to this new audience.

“We knew that it was important for us to do something different,” said Rocky Jain, Director of Manulife’s RED Lab.

He emphasized that the challenge was an opportunity to approach the community, post-secondary students, and tech-minded people in the region in a different way.

Similar to the startups that Jain now interacts with at the Hub, this was an experiment. “We weren’t sure what was going to happen,” he said.

And like most testing, you learn and refine as you go.

“It’s become sort of a fairytale story, around the whole IP thing,” he said, adding that, “From the outset, we wanted to protect the IP and we received considerable concern from the tech community.”

Manulife was quick to drop its initial stipulation of retaining ownership of the intellectual property from applicants or winners.

“What was interesting was Manulife was quick to respond to a community that they haven’t worked with closely, and the tech community was stunned,” he said.

Jain credits his new partner and neighbour.

“Communitech gave us the strength; they gave us the guts to reach out to a market that we typically don’t reach out to,” he said, adding, “If we had the lab elsewhere…I don’t know if we would have been as successful with this event.”

The event showed a different side to Manulife, a side that embraces innovation, but it was also an opportunity to encourage students by exposing them to entrepreneurship.

“I have been to a lot of these competitions and have helped out as a volunteer or in the audience, but to actually be up there on stage is really cool,” Clark said. “I think I like it being up on stage a lot more. It’s something that I want to pursue by hopefully starting my own business soon.”