Why Banking Services Need Quality Assurance and Testing?

The pace of digitization in the domain of banking and financial services has brought about customer benefits that were unthinkable in the past. Now, you don’t have to queue up at the bank, but you can avail a slew of services such as payments, deposits, withdrawals and others?—?either at the ATMs or by using digital devices connected to the internet. The banks too are using digital technologies to shore up their capacities and delivery mechanisms such as digital payment gateways etc. Furthermore, technology is leveraged to address the challenges/imperatives of cyber threats, mergers and acquisitions, revenue growth, and rising customer expectations.

As the banks move towards increased automation of their services to stay competitive and to offer a seamless customer experience, the need for quality assurance testing has become significant. In today’s techno centric banking environment, internet and mobile banking in combination with the use of ATMs has made life simpler for the customers and bankers alike. However, there are significant challenges as well. These relate to the increased incidences of financial frauds, cyber threats and sudden system disruptions. Thus, banks and financial institutions can ignore the growing importance of quality assurance testing only at their own risk.

How can quality assurance testing be of help?

Ensures seamless delivery of services: Today’s banks use cutting edge technologies to provide a slew of services. These include;

• CRM based banking software to enable transactions and carry out functions such as customer database management, auditing and reporting, large scale integration, and incidence management.
• ATM services to facilitate routine banking transactions such as deposits, withdrawals, checking of balance, etc.
• Mobile applications with a robust customer interface.
• Digital payment systems such as cards, gateways, and wallets.
• Digital mechanism to transact in securities, mutual funds, debentures, derivatives etc.

To ensure the effective functioning of the above mentioned services across mobile and cloud platforms, software quality assurance testing is needed. The digital QA testing should be carried out before and after the deployment of the applications. Importantly, the applications should be updated from time to time to meet the growing threat from malware, ransomware, viruses, and trojans. Furthermore, quality assurance testing should focus on ensuring the robustness of disaster recovery mechanism as well.

Check for financial irregularities: There are growing incidences of financial irregularities that the built-in automated checking systems have failed to identify in time. These incidents involved siphoning of huge sums of money by a mismanaged bunch of creditors and bank employees. Such incidents have brought into sharp focus the need for timely software QA testing of the digital architecture in banks.

Prevents system disruption: The interconnection of banking services has improved the customer experience a great deal but has led to major disruptions within the financial system. These can bring the entire banking services to a halt leading to customer distress. Thus, QA and testing of the banking system architecture should be the norm rather than an exception.

Enables seamless core and miscellaneous banking activities: In addition to providing a robust customer interface for seamless delivery of services, banks use their digital architecture to manage core (and miscellaneous) activities as well. These relate to mergers and acquisitions, rolling out new products and services, data storage, etc. To ensure the system architecture functions to its optimum, software quality assurance testing is a must.

Prevents cyber threats: Banks protect their data and systems (including ATMs and banking apps) by installing robust security mechanisms such as firewalls. These are to prevent threats emanating from viruses, trojans, malware and ransomware. However, these security mechanisms should be kept updated with periodic security audits, given the fact that newer threats keep on emerging. This is where the role of software quality assurance testing gains prominence.

Adhere to global security regulations: Banks should ensure the security and integrity of customer information across multiple touch points?—?branch, IVR, mobile, ATM, and internet. Additionally, the security protocol followed at the banks should comply with global security regulations as well. These necessitate the use of Software QA testing.

Types of QA and testing

Since digital banking leverage technologies such as cloud computing, big data analytics, and mobility, there is a pressing need to implement a comprehensive QA and testing methodology. The development and deployment of banking apps should shed the traditional waterfall testing method. Instead, the focus should move towards Agile and DevOps environment to ensure a greater integration of the legacy systems.

Given the greater interconnectivity of their systems and applications, banks should conduct a range of digital QA testing activities. This is mainly to validate the proper functioning of the processes and applications to achieve a greater customer satisfaction. The tests should include the following.

Performance test: The apps and processes are tested in normal conditions to measure their response against a set of users. These users can come from multiple channels.

Load test: The test measures the response of the apps when the number of users increases beyond the usual range.

Stress test: The test is to identify the breaking point when the apps would simply crash.

Security test: The test is to check for bugs or security gaps across the workflows that the app covers.

Conclusion

QA and testing initiatives bring tremendous business value for digital banking, which is further extended to the customers in the form of greater security, better experience, and ease of operation. However, it is important that organizations work with a strategy that eventually helps them to meet their overall business objectives.

This Article is originally submitted at Medium.com How can Quality Assurance and Testing add value in Digital Banking?