How Automated Software Testing Can Help Challenger Banks Grow Market Shares
Challenger banks have revolutionized the banking industry by appealing to consumers disillusioned by traditional institutions, particularly after the global financial crisis. As detailed in CB Insights' Challenger Bank Playbook, these innovative banks have successfully carved a niche by prioritizing customer satisfaction, offering services tailored to individual needs and circumstances, such as low fees, and enhancing digital accessibility and quality.
Why digitalization is critical to banking
Digitalization is increasingly becoming a critical aspect of the banking industry, largely driven by the rise of challenger banks. These banks have significantly grown over the years, positioning themselves as strong competitors against traditional banks. A key factor in their success is their ability to offer free, digital services that meet the evolving consumer demands.
This shift has fundamentally reshaped the financial landscape, introducing new standards that prioritize accessibility and user experience. According to a CB Insights report, challenger banks have capitalized on their ability to improve user experiences, appealing especially to tech-savvy customers who prefer to manage their finances via their smartphones rather than visiting physical bank locations.
This trend is particularly important as the Generation Z demographic becomes a significant sector within the financial market. This group values fast, responsive, and accessible banking services, attributes that are inherently supported by digital platforms.
The digital-first approach of challenger banks not only meets these expectations but also sets the bar higher for traditional banks to innovate.
Modernizing testing for banks’ digital transformation
Challenger banks have certainly organized their business model around customer convenience but, in order to truly be successful, it’s important that they also extend this customer-focused approach to testing their websites and applications. In order for digital properties to deliver the high-quality, always-on experience by which challenger banks differentiate themselves, it’s critical that these companies reorient testing around the customer.
Keysight empowers companies to evolve their testing strategies from focusing solely on compliance to testing from the user’s perspective, understanding how customers are interacting with the technology and how this behavior is affecting business outcomes.
Challenges in testing financial software and systems
Testing financial service software is no easy feat.
Testing across modern and legacy systems
Banks often operate with a blend of modern and legacy systems that are crucial for conducting financial transactions and safeguarding sensitive data. These systems have multiple subsystems that also need to be tested. Traditional testing approaches have become increasingly time-consuming and error prone.
Time-consuming test data creation and limited test coverage
Test data is a critical input to the testing effort. Yet it is impossible to create at the financial data transaction volumes and permutations typically contained in the banks’ files being received by the system in both directions. As a result, the manual testing approach simply cannot allow for extended test coverage across all banking clients.
Maintaining consistency
Consistent testing practice is vital to ensure that every component of the banking system works as expected under all circumstances. However, repetitive manual QA tasks decrease the level of consistency and coverage.
Automated software testing for banks
To overcome the quality assurance (QA) challenges in the financial services industry, leveraging advanced software test automation technologies such as optical character recognition (OCR), codeless automation, and computer vision is essential. The tool should also support integrated, end-to-end testing for various application types including cloud, thick client, mobile, web, and mainframe systems. Financial institutions can ensure their software systems are not only compliant with industry regulations but also meet higher standards of functionality and user experience required in today's competitive market.
Enhanced compliance with industry regulations
Automated testing platforms such as Keysight Eggplant can streamline the testing process in environments that are highly regulated and complex. Its non-invasive automation capability ensures that testing is thorough without needing to access the source code. F
No-code / low-code testing
Keysight Eggplant offers graphical modeling and a natural-language-like scripting language, SenseTalk, making it accessible for nontechnical users to design and execute tests. This feature democratizes the testing process, allowing more stakeholders to participate in QA without needing deep technical expertise in coding.
Testing from a real user perspective
Another significant advancement in overcoming QA challenges is the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The AI engine within Keysight Eggplant mimics human behavior to identify errors, enabling it to detect issues in the way a real user might encounter them but much faster. This approach not only enhances the efficiency of the testing process but also increases the accuracy and relevance of the tests, ensuring that the software performs optimally in real-world scenarios.
Learn more about Keysight Eggplant’s customer-driven approach to financial services testing, and why it is an essential strategy for any challenger bank looking to scale for ongoing success.