What are the testing practices in Financial Services

Question

I'm currently working on a new financial services software and wanted to know what is the current testing practices in the financial services.

Would love to hear any thoughts/insights regarding the testing. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I can think of a few ideas:

• security, e.g. three attempts to log in, if fails, need to lock down the account and ask the user to contact customer support and unlock it.
• security, e.g. does it protect against SQL injection and etc.
• decimal places, e.g. how many decimal places does it need to support? how does it round up numbers?
• positive / negative number, how does support positive / negative numbers?
• navigation, e.g. when a number is entered, does it retain its value by default when navigating away?
• workflow, e.g. does the workflow meet the specs?
• multiple access to one account, e.g. does it allow multiple users to access one account?

Answer 2

In addition to the testing already highlighted - you'll also need to consider the core elements of any financial product.

APR, terms, interest, changing repayment schedules, changing card payments, changing payment dates, statements, back office usability (call centre, for example), any third party software integrations (like live chat), third party hardware integrations (like fingerprint recognition), early repayments, late repayments + fees, and so on. Plus, you need to consider the front-end usability (different browsers and devices)

You may have chosen one of the most complicated sectors to work in. My advice would be to not skimp on the testing as a breach could be irrevocably damaging (reputationally and financially) to the company - especially in the UK as the FCA have clamped down on rogue lenders in the last few years.

Answer 3

To add to Yu Zhang's answer:

• Encryption: Very important that the database back-end is secure and encrypted
• Time critical: If this is for the stock market where buying and selling happen quickly you need a system that has a fast response time
• Performance: Similar to previous point, large amounts of concurrent users means load balancing is vital, can you system handle this efficiently?

A lot of the time you can just put yourself in the shoes of the user to start to get an idea of what you expect the system should do. For example, when using my bank online I want it to be secure, simple to use, and available whenever I want. Then try drilling down into those features to see if the system delivers them to a high standard. Good luck!