The banking and financial landscape is undergoing a huge transformation to support the continually changing customer behavior, which is determined by the changing uncertainty. Uncertain situations, like the COVID-19 pandemic, have driven banks and financial companies to innovate in order to succeed. Organizations are leveraging the power of technology to cope up with these times of changing uncertainty. 

The rapidly increasing COVID-19 situation has led the banking and financial sector to strengthen its digital transformation journey. Companies are redefining their operating models with more agile and practical systems to support the complex digital workflows and offer a smooth user experience. They are utilizing an innovative approach to establish new business models, which will, in turn, require advanced test automation practices to identify any associated discrepancies or risks. Test automation is an integral part of any innovation; it is much more than a mere QA check, it offers huge scope to improve the product quality and establish a unique brand. 

How uncertainty encourages banks/financial companies to innovate 

Like the 2008 financial crisis or the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, uncertain situations have always had an immense impact on the banking and the financial sector. Being the core part of the global economic growth, the BFSI sector should strengthen and prepare itself for any kind of market, economic, natural, or political uncertainties. Only organizations that thrive in these situations and offer an unparalleled user experience even under the worst scenario can succeed, while others lose their existence. 

Innovation is the only key to sustain and succeed through uncertainty. It allows organizations to come up with new techniques, tools, and models that will be most appropriate to the new scenario. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic had restricted people visiting banks, which led banks/financial institutions to be a part of the digital revolution. Organizations started innovating their systems/processes to make it digitally available for their customers. This trend of digital innovation in the banking sector created an array of opportunities to improve all their systems. Hence, any uncertain situation can be easily converted to a favourable one by utilizing the power of innovation. 

Innovation and test automation: How are they connected?  

Innovation comes to the rescue during uncertain situations, but the question is how reliable the innovative approach is? The reliability of any innovation lies in the quality of the end-product/service. The only way to make any innovation work both for the banks and customers is to ensure the quality is exceptional. Performing test automation of the new banking/financial process will identify any errors and allow the developer to fix them before its launch. If innovation is inevitable to succeed during uncertainty, test automation is the key to make innovation successful. 

The technological innovations in banks and financial institutions are revolutionizing the entire banking/financial system. However, they are mostly associated with operational and infrastructural flaws. A good test automation strategy can help organizations to identify any errors offering a flawlessly working system to their customers. This process of performing testing improves the user experience, creates brand credibility, and increases business revenue.  

The current challenges faced by the global software testing fraternity 

The current market scenario, which is rapidly changing, demands organizations to incorporate QA processes that can support the high market volatility. Though organizations are already on the path to develop intelligent test automation solutions (some of them are already made available), there are many challenges that are being worked on. Some of the major test automation challenges faced by banks and financial companies are: 

Test case generation issues 

Banks and financial institutions offer a wide range of complex, financial services such as money transfer, savings management, loan origination and completion, credit card management, real-time updates etc. These are highly complex processes involving sensitive financial data, hence, there is no scope of error offered to the organizations. Further, the organizations are required to ensure complete privacy and security to avoid any kind of violation. With so many critical parameters involved, the organization should have ample data to generate a good test case repository and help save time, cost, and effort. Creating the right test cases will help banks and financial companies to improve their QA process considerably, whereas a set of poorly written test cases still remains a major challenge for a company’s growth.  

Performance failure scenarios 

Banks and financial institutions have thousands of customers accessing the organization’s system, all at one time. Any failure in the performance can even cause financial losses and destroy the brand completely. It is important for organizations to monitor their system performance to ensure a seamless user experience. Though banks and financial companies are investing in improving the stability and scalability under high traffic, unexpected performance failures remain a matter of concern, even today. 

Longer time to perform test execution 

Automated testing system performs regression testing every day at a particular time to ensure there is no discrepancy. Undoubtedly, test automation has reduced manual effort considerably by automating the entire process, however, the run time is still high and one of the challenges the banks are facing today. Reducing the test execution time will be a major milestone that is being solved with intelligent automation. 

Regulatory and security concerns 

The increasing scenario of cyber threats has led to strict regulatory laws, it is important to integrate a test automation solution to comply with the financial regulations. Test automation helps in a thorough audit to reduce/eliminate the chances of increasing fraudulent. Excellence in test automation is important to succeed while ensuring there are no significant breaches. 

The changing trends of test automation in banking/financial sector 

Gone are the days when people had to visit the bank for even simple money withdrawal, digitization has changed the way banks operate. The entire banking/financial process can be completed with a few clicks, at the comfort of home. No longer queues or no more taking a personal day off to complete a transaction, banks are coming up with innovative and practical solutions to ease the complex financial processes. 

Test automation has redefined the modern QA system, emerging as a key facilitator for the success of any organization. The testing framework has evolved over time to ensure that quality remains the prime interest. Organizations are now preferring agile test execution methods to support the advanced continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines. The improving emphasize on quality can help organizations to brace themselves and face unexpected scenarios. 

The emerging trends in test automation that can help organizations emerge as future-proof and offer great business solutions are: 

• Codeless test automation: Automating the test without the need for extensive coding. 
• Shift left testing: Incorporating testing at the early stage of the software development lifecycle. 
• Cloud-based testing: Testing software using Cloud-computing services. 
• AI-powered test automation: Leveraging the power of Artificial Intelligence to perform testing. 
• Mobile test automation: Automation testing for native and hybrid mobile apps. 

With the growing technological advancement in the banking and financial sector, it can be concluded that the need for test automation will remain the priority. Testing teams in collaboration with the development teams are planning well-established, well-aligned, agile, and practical solutions that will redefine the concept of test automation for the better. 

The future test automation models: Innovation is the key 

Uncertainty in the market scenario has redefined the banking experience. Banks and financial institutions are strengthening their market presence with agile solutions to support future models. Major emphasize is being laid on the test automation solution to improve the customer experience which will, in turn, increase the business revenue tremendously. This new trend of improved QA has made way for efficient business models, which is possible only by an innovative approach. 

Innovation in software testing allowed the evolution of tedious manual testing to easy and much efficient test automation solutions. Innovation is the key to reimagine the test automation models for advanced and intelligent solutions. AI and ML integrated models are already making their way into the market to create future-proof technology, more future solutions are in the pipeline.