As digitalization conquers the banking and finance industries, the importance of having an efficient and up-to-date software quality assurance process is key for organizations operating in these areas. This article discusses software testing trends directly impact banking and finance.
Introduction
IT investment is on the rise, as it has been for several years now. One sector that has fully embraced this trend, of increasing investment into their digital transformation, is the banking and finance sectors. These critical cogs in the global economy are leveraging the expertise of software developers to remain competitive and keep ahead of potential industry-wide disruptive technology on the horizon. What does this mean for software testing in the foreseeable future?
Software as a Means to Retain Customers
Over the last several years this sector has looked to use technology to not only meet their customer needs but surpass them. As a result, mobile apps and Internet banking facilities strive to allow customers to have unparalleled access to account information and account management. This has given rise to many customers now expecting to be able to easily purchase insurance or apply for a loan at the click of a button.
As technology investment continues to rise and previous hurdles to providing such services migrate from the branch to the mobile phone, like guaranteeing secure access to services, the priority for software testers has changed discernibly. As the finance and banking sectors are heavily regulated, and deal with terabytes of sensitive data on a daily basis, all testing must be done with security at the forefront. Any security flaw could result in the loss of millions for the institution in question.
Security and Compliance
The importance of security and compliance with local laws and international standards has meant that software testing and quality assurance are paramount and cannot be stated enough. With the recent folding of several US banks, while not directly related to software, will place even more emphasis on legal compliance, software testers will need to be aware of it.
Unfortunately for financial software development, the margin of error is now so close to zero that no mistakes can be tolerated. This means that testing and quality assurance has to look at the security of not only the entire code base but factors like data migrations and integration with existing IT infrastructure.
One thing that is to the advantage of software testers in this regard is because the industry is reliant on what other sectors would call legacy systems, technology integration is purposefully slowed. This is done to ensure integration with existing legacy systems but in turn, allows for thorough testing to be done.
Automation
As more and more businesses and people can bank or access financial services via mobile phones on the move, and a significant portion of the population still relies on legacy payment vehicles like credit and debit cards specialist testing needs to be developed. Testing automation has proven to be a lifesaver in this regard as testing companies have experienced greater testing accuracy as there is less room for error when automated procedures are developed correctly.
This trend in testing automation is expected to remain for the long term as software developers and testers have seen faster turnaround times in bringing products to market, even in an industry with traditionally slow IT integration of newer technologies.
Conclusion
The banking and financial sectors have been traditionally slow to follow tech trends. However, over the last several years what was traditionally slow adoption has sped up significantly as the demands of customers have changed. This increase in the pace of adoption is likely to continue at a faster rate in the next few years, this will help improve innovations in software testing to met these future challenges.