How to Improve Quality Assurance In Banking & Financial Applications

Key Takeaways

• The banking sector faces unique challenges with compliance and safeguarding data
• Better QA and testing approaches are vital for enhanced end-user experiences
• Agile methodologies are key for maximizing QA success
• Automation, AI and machine learning will further transform QA in the future

How to Improve Quality Assurance In Banking & Financial Applications

Quality assurance in banking and finance has never been more important, with some organizations allocating 23% of their annual IT budget to QA and testing. Because of the sensitive funds, data and transactions that banking firms handle everyday, rigorous testing of products and applications is essential, to ensure that they are free of defects and vulnerabilities. Furthermore, this also helps ensure that end-users get the quality experiences they expect, and can access banking services that are reliable, secure and free of difficulty.

But in a competitive landscape, ensuring the appropriate time and resources are in place for comprehensive digital assurance in banking isn’t always the priority it should be. This blog explores the challenges around QA for financial applications, and some of the practical strategies and best practices for improving QA processes.

Understanding the Unique Challenges in Banking & Financial QA

The financial sector is very different from many others, meaning that some of the vital considerations around QA are especially distinctive:

Multi-layered Application Architecture

A detailed banking application will typically involve several different layers, including Presentation (the parts that are user-facing), Logic and Data. Ensuring each layer works seamlessly with the others is critical for a smooth and reliable experience.

Integration with Third-Party Systems

In order to facilitate smooth financial transactions, banking applications need seamless and well-tested integrations, across APIs, payment gateways, third-party services and more.

Regulatory Compliance and Standards

Finance firms, including payment gateways and card providers, are subject to particularly stringent regulations and compliance demands, such as PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) for safeguarding cardholder data, and the SOX anti-fraud measures in the United States. QA is vital for testing the measures in place to meet these essential standards.

Security Concerns and Data Privacy

Connected to the previous point, QA processes can quantify the level of security and sensitive and personal data protection in place across an application. Information security management is vital for minimizing the risk of unauthorized data access or security breaches like ransomware, meeting the requirements of regulations like GDPR, and mitigating potential reputational damage.

Non-Functional Aspects

Fluctuations in demand for an application, such as peaks in load times and transaction volumes, should be tested through QA to ensure that every user can always get the experience they expect, all the time.

QA can also assess an application from an accessibility and user-friendliness perspective, ensuring that all users get the highest-quality interfaces and experience - including those who have disabilities. 

Best Practices for Enhancing QA in Banking Application Testing

While it’s clear that QA in financial applications is critical, we’ve often found that some firms lack clarity around how those processes should work in practice. From our experience, we recommend the following:

Comprehensive Test Management

A good, detailed QA testing plan should cover every part of the application, across databases, functions, accessibility, security, performance, regression and more. Regular status reporting based on short cycles can align the findings with any required remediations.

Focus on API Testing

API testing enables earlier issue detection and full testing coverage to speed up development cycles and application quality. Whereas UI testing focuses on end-user experiences, API testing drills down into the functionality ‘behind the scenes’, and how different software components interact. This complements the test pyramid approach, occupying the middle layer between unit and UI tests.

Performance Testing

Banking app performance testing is especially important for assessing peak capacity of the application, and how scalable and resilient it can be in different circumstances. Tools like JMeter and Gatling have large communities behind them to maximize the capabilities of testing in this area.

Security Testing

Vulnerability assessments and penetration tests can accurately assess the security posture of an application by simulating possible cyber-attacks, so that any gaps and weaknesses can be addressed proactively. Useful tools for these tests include OWASP ZAP and Burp Suite.

Automated Regression Testing

Automation testing is gaining traction, with forecasts suggesting it will reach a value of $68 billion by 2025. In Banking particularly it can be especially beneficial for long-term projects, especially around regression and confirmation testing when code changes are made, so that no unintended adverse impacts seep through. Popular tools here include Selenium, Playwright and Cypress for web application testing, and Postman and Gatling for APIs.

User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

The best way to simulate realistic use of an application is to involve real users in the testing process. Gathering and acting on their feedback can give relevant information to the development team in ironing out bugs pre-release.

Utilizing Agile Methodologies for QA

QA processes tend to work best when an Agile methodology is deployed, and there are three important strands to making this a success:

Agile Principles and Practices

There are several different approaches to Agile QA in finance that can work for banking application development. These include Kanban (boards for visualizing and grouping workflows); XP (software development in short cycles); hybrid methodologies combining Scrum, XP and Kanban tailored to the specific project and organizational needs; and the general Agile principle of reviewing progress on a regular basis.

Shift Left Approach

The concept of "shift-left" in software development and quality assurance emphasizes moving testing and quality control activities earlier in the development lifecycle. This approach is particularly valuable in banking application QA, where security, accuracy, and reliability are critical. 

Several up-to-date test-first practices are suitable for deployment in banking application QA, including (and not necessarily limited to):

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

CI/CD in banking QA can streamline the entire process, automating repetitive tasks and making testing procedures standardized. Popular tools like Jenkins and GitLab CI can free up QA teams to work on more complex issues, and maximise efficiency and effectiveness in the process.

Collaboration Between Development and QA Teams

In order to address all the potential issues that QA processes identify, it’s crucial that all parties are working in the same direction. A whole-team approach to communication and collaboration, allied to a DevOps approach, are instrumental in enabling this.

The Role of Test Automation in Enhancing QA

Just as automation has transformed other parts of the development process, it’s added a new level of accuracy and efficiency to financial software QA, too. In particular, testing tools driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning - supported by big data - are also helping identify and root out issues proactively.

This can be particularly beneficial when integrating blockchain into applications to enable secure transactions. Being able to add the protection of decentralization and encryption can deliver an extra layer of reassurance for users, and minimize the risk of data or funds falling into malicious hands

In Summary: Future Trends in QA for Banking & Financial Applications

With technology and banking continuing to evolve at a rapid rate, we see four main trends shaping QA in the sector in the months and years ahead:

The Rise of FinTech

The ability to test and iterate quickly is one of the key drivers of FinTech’s agility and speed to market; this will continue to have major implications for established players who can be slower to innovate and digitally transform.

Increasing Focus on Cybersecurity

Adopting a proactive attitude to QA and cybersecurity will remain critical in order to protect against new threats; the analytical capabilities of AI and machine learning will be essential in enabling that proactivity.

Evolution of Compliance Requirements

Regulations around cybersecurity, financial safeguards and data protection will only continue to strengthen around the world. QA has an important part to play within strategies for dealing with these evolving regulations.

  Usage of ML models
It’s likely that machine learning will play an increasing role in testing effectiveness in the future; this means it will be important to train ML models to look at finance-specific pain points.