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Standardising quality assurance and IT risk management

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According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, 30% of all banks answer to 10 or more regulators, and for a major international bank there can be 350+ regulatory reviews annually. With regulators increasing their focus on IT risk, it is essential that banks transform their QA and testing processes in order to demonstrate best practices as well as deliver more features, more quickly. Michael Venditti, Head of Enterprise Testing Services at Deutsche Bank, will be a keynote speaker at the QA Financial Forum London 2018, and will discuss Deutsche Bank’s testing transformation journey, and how the Bank is managing IT risk through process standardisation and efficient governance. “All banks are going through a period of digital innovation, with a lot of focus placed on offering their customers more digital services,” Michael told QA Financial. “At the same time, there’s an increased risk of cyber-attacks, so regulators are placing more focus on digital risk management.” In recent years, regulatory guidance from the likes of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) have pushed banks to rethink how they conduct and audit their software testing practices. “Regulators want to see Banks publishing and maintaining test standards/policies. And so Banks need to first establish the testing requirements across their assets and produce a set of standards,” explained Michael. Test process transformation As with many Banks across the industry, Deutsche Bank set off on its journey to define and implement testing standards across its businesses, taking recommendations from external regulatory bodies, as well as the Bank’s internal/external audit groups. “Implementing new standards/policies across a business is no easy task in any organisation. For any Bank, standards first need to be defined, then communicated to the masses, and finally measured,” he said. It is important that test processes are repeatable and auditable, explained Michael. Once processes are consistent, this helps reduce risk and improve production stability. Rolling out new global processes across an organisation, however, is a major hurdle to overcome. “Organisational change is key. The change needs to come from the bottom-up. Teams have to believe in the standards/policies that they are following, and at the same time, Management needs to exercise patience and understand transition cannot just happen overnight. Educating the business is a huge step. I went global and personally trained 8,000 people at Deutsche Bank, and this took time” explained Michael. It’s not just regulatory compliance that drives more focus towards a Bank’s quality assurance processes, it’s also the increased emphasis on improving end user experience, explained Michael. “Quality assurance as a centralised function seems to be less pertinent with the emergence of Agile and DevOps, and although teams may be implementing testing practices across an application’s lifecycle, QA still needs to play a major role in product development. Auditable records of testing practices are key in satisfying regulatory requirements.” Michael concluded that even with the emergence of Agile and DevOps, the regulators still expect that the Bank is defining, educating and measuring test processes consistently to stay compliant. Michael Venditti will be a keynote speaker at the QA Financial Forum London 2018, taking place on 21st February at the Hilton Canary Wharf. To view the full agenda, click here.