Two themes dominated the agenda for the QA Financial Digital which took place on March 16th.
First, the impact that new software development and testing technologies can have on quality. An Nadein, Executive Director for Software Engineering at JPMorgan Chase, delivered a keynote presentation on how JPMorgan Chase is re-inventing IT risk management, including firm-wide standards for app quality, and how it plans to roll out AI-based software testing. You can watch An’s presentation here.
Second, the challenge of establishing enterprise standards for software quality. The world’s largest financial firms are striving to achieve what Ramkumar Ayyadurai, Global Head of Test Engineering for Equities at Citi, describes as “simplicity at scale”. In striving to create an app delivery platform for a global business, banks such as Citi have to work not only with a complex matrix of legacy systems, but also the different requirements of more than one hundred different regulatory regimes; some of which are increasingly prescriptive when it comes to standards for operational resilience and IT risk.
What about smaller, regional banks and credit unions? Their challenge is competing with the new breed of digital banks that compete on the quality and usability of their apps. According to Kevin Formby, VP of Capital Markets and Finance Products at Keysight Technologies – the NYSE-listed test services company that last year acquired Eggplant, the AI and automation specialist – automated testing could provide at least part of the technology answer for those smaller firms; helping them customise their core platforms. Watch our Q&A session with Kevin Formby here.
Taking part in our panel discussion on new standards for operational resilience and complexity: Keith Bear from the Centre for Alternative Finance at the Judge Business School, Cambridge University; Colin Ware, Regulatory Product Manager at BNY Mellon and Colin Wynd, Head of Real-Time Payments Technology at The Clearing House. Keith Bear started by describing the regulatory genome” project at Judge, which is creating an open repository of regulatory information. Watch that session here.
Covid has accelerated customer demand for digital financial services and the “new normal” will require even high standards of app quality. Stephane Maltais, QA Manager at Intact Financial, the Toronto-based insurance company, described how he has responded to the challenge of “pandemic-driven testing”.
Stephane was introduced by Eran Kinsbruner, chief product evangelist at cloud automation specialist Perfecto. Watch the presentation here.
Cielo is Brazil’s leading credit card company. Ana Paula Milani, IT Manager at Cielo has been working with QA Financial’s Vector Analytics platform, headed by Justyn Trenner, to benchmark improvements to Cielo’s Quality processes across different workstreams. Watch a discussion between Ana and Justyn on the methodology and outcomes of that project here.
David Wall, QA Director at Planet Payments, the duty free payments platform based in Ireland, described in detail why his team had chosen Ticentis’s Tosca automation tool rather than open-sourced alternatives, and the RoI he has achieved from automating testing. Watch that presentation here.
Other expert presentations focused on the detail of new automation and AI technologies, and how these technologies are accelerating software delivery. Izzy Azeri, Co-Founder of mabl, the test management platform described how financial firms have been applying automated testing for CI/CD. Watch his presentation here.
Yoann Lechevallier, Senior Solutions Engineer at Sauce Labs, the cloud-based test automation specialist, described how AI and machine learning-enabled test authoring can help financial firms speed their digital change. Watch the presentation here.
Many financial firms are struggling to connect new data lakes with test environments. Gary Hallam, Director at data management specialist Delphix, discussed some of the solutions and the potential for automated data to drive advances in software testing. Watch the presentation here.
