Inaugural Bloomberg Code Crunch Hackathon in Singapore Convenes Students and Financial Institutions to Solve Real-World Financial Challenges

(from left to right) Qingwei Goh, Head of Asset Owners and Hedge Fund Sales, Bloomberg; Kelvin Cen, Head of Southeast Asia, Bloomberg; Professor Byoung-Hyoun Hwang, Head of the Division of Banking and Finance and Provost's Chair in Finance at NBS, NTU; Adeem Altaf, Global Head of Market Specialists, Bloomberg; Arun Verma, Head of Quantitative Research Solutions in Bloomberg's CTO Office; Ling Li Chew, Buy-Side Account Manager, Bloomberg; Mingliang Wen, Enterprise Sales Account Manager, Bloomberg

Singapore - 13 November, 2025 - Bloomberg hosted its first Code Crunch Hackathon finale in Singapore on 29 October 2025, convening three shortlisted teams from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) and six teams from leading financial institutions, including Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singlife, Modular, Robeco, AIA and LGT Investment Management, to showcase their pioneering solutions for real-world financial challenges.

Powered by BQuant Desktop and BQuant Enterprise ("BQuant"), Bloomberg's Python-based data science and analytics platforms, the Code Crunch program was designed to nurture the current and next generation of coders, foster innovation and encourage knowledge sharing across the quant and finance community in Singapore. The program was extended for two groups, one for institutions and the other for NTU students, the latter in partnership with Nanyang Business School (NBS), the premier business school of NTU. The three-month program offered participants access to BQuant and a training session led by Bloomberg specialists to provide foundational skills for each team. Individual teams were tasked to tackle one challenge - solving for a real-world financial industry challenge or creating an innovative investment strategy.

"The inaugural launch and forward-looking solutions developed during our Code Crunch Hackathon is a testament to the stellar quant and AI talent in Singapore and Bloomberg's commitment to fostering the community here for the long term," said Kelvin Cen, Head of Southeast Asia at Bloomberg. "The finance industry is always looking for ways to harness AI and machine learning to make better, more informed investment decisions, and the goal of Code Crunch is to spark innovative solutions that help uncover alpha and drive decision-making."

The event showcased advanced quantitative finance and AI-enhanced tools built by teams using BQuant to tackle financial challenges or improve investment decision-making across their teams. Each team had 15 minutes to present their projects, followed by a Q&A session.

Student Innovations Around Real-Time Market Movement
Three student finalist teams from NTU were tasked with designing an indicator to reflect the state of market behavior. Solutions focused on quantitative strategies and indicators to forecast, respond and model market behavior in both rational and irrational times. Team CodeQuants was chosen as the winner for their Cross-Asset Divergence Indicator (CADI), which differentiates itself from traditional indicators in its ability to provide early warnings of systemic stress (including potential black swan events) and offer deeper insights into how emotions affect market volatility. The winning team was offered a mentorship opportunity with Bloomberg's Quant Finance team in the Office of the CTO, through which they will have the chance to discuss their solutions and receive career and skills development feedback to further advance in the quantitative research, advanced analytics and modeling technique realms.

"In the age of AI, training the next generation of coders and providing students hands-on experience for the job market is critical now more than ever," said Professor Byoung-Hyoun Hwang, Head of the Division of Banking and Finance and Provost's Chair in Finance at NBS, NTU. "Bloomberg's Code Crunch Hackathon serves as an important opportunity to future-proof Singapore's talent and also provide them with access to the growing quant and finance community."

Financial Institutions Solving for Real-World Industry Challenges

Finance practitioners pitched their problem statements underpinned by industry challenges and presented solutions to the identified challenges. Solutions focused on machine learning or AI-powered dashboards and tools which enhanced alpha generation, risk mitigation and investment strategy testing. Each team was awarded based on contributions in different categories:

• 1 Judges' Pick - MAS: Decided by Professor Byoung-Hyoun from NTU, this award honored the team that demonstrated the most creative and rigorous application of quantitative research principles. It celebrates innovative thinking, methodological excellence, and the ability to apply academic rigor to real-world financial challenges. Utilizing BQuant Enterprise, the MAS team built the AI-powered PULSE dashboard, a textual analysis solution that analyzes Bloomberg News articles tracking daily sentiment signals on key macro themes, thereby enabling faster monitoring and identification of potential shifts in macroeconomic conditions.
• 1 BQuant Mastermind - Robeco: Selected by Arun Verma from Bloomberg's CTO Office, this award focused on sophisticated data processing and interface considerations aimed at ensuring a lasting user experience-elements that may not be immediately apparent in the team's presentation. The Robeco team built a credit cross-currency relative value solution that generated potential alpha by exploiting cross-currency spread differentials between bonds issued by the same issuer in different currencies.
• 2 Most Popular Awards - MAS and AIA: This award was presented to the teams that captured the hearts and minds of event attendees. Selected through live audience voting during booth interactions, it recognized the projects that most impressed visitors with their innovation, impact, and presentation. The audience voted for the PULSE dashboard from the MAS team, as well as AIA's powerful visualization and scoring tool that evaluated funds across both thematic and traditional dimensions.
• 3 Quantributor Awards - Singlife, Modular and LGT Investment Management: This award category honored the teams that demonstrated exceptional innovation and originality in tackling real-world challenges faced by the industry. Selected by a panel of judges, the Quantributor Awards recognize teams that contribute impactful, forward-thinking solutions. Singlife, Modular and LGT Investment Management teams were chosen for this category. With BQuant Enterprise, Singlife presented a credit risk dashboard that consolidated insights from AI models, Bloomberg News data and internal data that provided a centralized view of issuer-specific credit events that enhanced their team's ability to monitor and respond to emerging news in real time. Modular built an interactive BQuant dashboard that analyzed FX swap spreads through analysis, technical indicators and seasonality patterns to identify and act on trading opportunities. LGT Investment Management created a multi-asset backtesting and quantitative dashboard, which enabled them to evaluate and test investment ideas and explore potential value-add of new asset classes in investment strategies.

The award recipients were decided upon by a panel of judges including Arun Verma, Head of Quantitative Research Solutions in Bloomberg's CTO Office, Adeem Altaf, Global Head of Market Specialists, Bloomberg, and Professor Byoung-Hyoun Hwang, Head of the Division of Banking and Finance and Provost's Chair in Finance at NBS, NTU.

The Code Crunch Hackathon series underscores Bloomberg's commitment to fostering innovation, reflecting its vision for BQuant Desktop and BQuant Enterprise as tools for scalable, flexible, and impactful quantitative research.

About BQuant Desktop

Included with the Bloomberg Anywhere subscription, BQuant Desktop is a powerful solution that transforms how financial professionals analyze data and create investment strategies. This turnkey and highly-performant analytics platform gives enabled Bloomberg Terminal users programmatic access to Bloomberg data and analytics in a secure sandbox environment, where they can use Bloomberg's high-quality data and analytics together with open source data science libraries, and pre-existing sample code to quickly build and test financial analyses, investment strategies, and market dashboards. Learn more about BQuant Desktop at https://www.bloomberg.com/bquant/.

About BQuant Enterprise

BQuant Enterprise is a fully managed, cloud-based analytics platform that enables financial institutions to scale investment workflows with advanced compute power, internal data integration capabilities, and seamless collaboration. Designed for rapid development, automation, and deployment, it empowers teams to get to market faster with greater operational agility and innovation. For more information, visit: https://www.bloomberg.com/bquant/.

About Bloomberg

Bloomberg is a global leader in business and financial information, delivering trusted data, news, and insights that bring transparency, efficiency, and fairness to markets. The company helps connect influential communities across the global financial ecosystem via reliable technology solutions that enable our customers to make more informed decisions and foster better collaboration. For more information, visit Bloomberg.com/company or request a demo.

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