A FLAGSHIP financial data challenge is back for another year.

The 2019 Datathon, held on March 11 and 12 at Deloitte’s Edinburgh office, has the largest ever sign up to the event to date.

Now in its third year, the Datathon is an intensive 24-hour competition which attracts top data scientists and businesses from across Scotland.

Participants with an interest in data and technology are invited to take part in the challenge.

The objective is to establish a meaningful link between data and trends in other areas that underpin social wellbeing with this year’s theme being “driving productivity”. Participants compete to solve challenges and create their concepts in a fast-paced environment, testing their ability to analyse data and develop concepts under pressure.

Chris Brown of Deloitte (pictured left) said: “The Datathon offers an entirely novel challenge because the level of access to data hasn’t been so readily available before.”

Tynah Matembe of Edinburgh-based fintech start-up MoneyMatiX, was a member of last year’s winning team, Data Nations, who developed a digital tool called FinTastic to help people make better financial decisions.

She said: “Deloitte’s flagship Datathon is a much-needed event that brings several stakeholders together creating a community and helping start-up’s like MoneyMatiX to validate and build relevant solutions to problems like financial wellbeing.

“You can’t put a price on that.”