The QA Financial Forum: London 2020

The QA Financial Forum London 2020

12 March, 2020
08:00am - 06:00pm

Software Risk Management and Technologies for Continuous App Delivery

The QA Financial Forum London 2020

Guoman Tower Hotel
St Katharine's Way
St Katharine's & Wapping
London E1W 1LD

There simply is no other event in 2020 that will attract as many executives working in software architecture, DevOps and digital transformation at leading financial firms in the UK.

Book Ticket Register Interest

Join us at the leading forum for professionals working in quality assurance and testing for software at banks, insurance and asset management companies. Featuring in-depth coverage on technologies for automation and continuous app delivery, including artificial intelligence.

The forum will cover:

Quality for the Entire Software Development Life-cycle
Technologies for Automation & AI
DevOps & CI/CD

Value Stream Management
Test Data Management

Regulatory Compliance
App Security & DevSecOps

Presentations are made and discussed under the Chatham House Rule.

To find out more about sponsorship opportunities please contact Lawrence Bell — lawrence@qa-financial.com
To find out more about speaking opportunities please contact Jade Mitchell - jade@qa-financial.com
To find out more about attending as a delegate please contact Kirstine Kennedy — kirstine@qa-financial.com

Speakers

Bala MukundCharles Schwab
Director of Technology

Bala Mukund is a Director of Technology for Charles Schwab with over 15 years of experience in managing, designing, and building enterprise level applications ranging from finance, sales, marketing, and banking systems. In the current role, Bala is the Technology Director and Solutions Architect for the Intelligent Portfolios platform – which provides automated investment advice. Bala worked closely with the IP technology teams to establish best development and quality automation practices leading to improved quality and delivery. Prior to joining Charles Schwab in 2015, Bala was a Technology Director at Morningstar and VP at Nationwide, in Chicago.
Mike SchoberCharles Schwab
Managing Director, Technology

Mike Schober is a Managing Director in Technology at Charles Schwab leading the software development and delivery of Schwab Intelligent Portfolios an innovative automated investing platform. Prior to Schwab he worked at large companies and startups with a personal driving force to deliver new and emerging technology solutions, including one of the first internet payment systems, an early one-click shopping experience, a first of its kind internet payment chip enabled credit card, and more. Mike has a passion for leading edge industry changing technology innovations and takes pride in delivering solutions that improve individual’s experiences and lives.
Vicki JacksonDeutsche Bank
Head of Delivery Platforms

Biography coming soon
Paul TrotterAtom Bank
Deputy CTO

Biography coming soon
Giorgos AmpavisTide
Head of Mobile and Web Engineering

Biography coming soon
Vasiliy MalychevGoogle
UK Mobile Lead

Vasiliy is a Mobile Lead in the UK and has been at Google for over 5 years. Prior to the UK, he worked as a mobile product strategist at Google in Mountain View, California for 3 years. In his current role, he helps large businesses in the UK improve their mobile website performance by focusing on webpage speed, UX, and functionality. Vasiliy specialises in the Finance & Services vertical working with clients that range from banks to insurance companies to aggregators.

Agenda

08:45 am

Welcome address and QA Vector® Research presentation

Matthew Crabbe, CEO and Founder – QA Media

Justyn Trenner, Director & Head of QA Vector® Research - QA Media

09:00 am

Accelerating innovation at Charles Schwab with continuous testing

Speakers: Bala Mukund, Director of Technology & Michael Schober, Managing Director, Technology - Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab transformed the quality assurance process for its Intelligent Portfolios robo-advisory platform product team by adopting a “shift left” continuous testing approach and validating quality through automation. In this presentation, Michael Schober and Bala Mukund will detail how they led this transformation of Schwab’s Wealth Management Technology team with the help of automated continuous testing. Delegates will learn how to streamline the software development process, practical processes for implementing continuous testing and how to reshape the DevOps culture to better meet customer needs and expectations.

09:30 am

Towards an enterprise quality assurance: benchmarking DevOps and continuous testing

There are several reasons large financial firms are looking to establish consistent code and app quality standards across the enterprise. To disseminate best technical practice, taking advantage of new methodologies, such as value stream management, and new software development platforms. Increasingly, also, to demonstrate best practice in compliance, as regulators and supervisors increasingly focus on operational resilience and IT risk management. Our speaker from a leading UK bank explains how it has developed software quality standards and dashboards for firm-wide dashboards and scorecards.

10:00 am

Driving lab transformation through self-service and automation

For financial institutions, re-inventing the digital experience requires incorporating, testing, and certifying new technologies. But doing so while maintaining control and compliance can take weeks, stifling innovation. Join our speaker to hear how financial firms are driving the digital experience, from infrastructure up, utilising self-service automation to transform their lab and accelerate innovation.

10:30 am

Coffee & networking break

11:00 am

DevOps, agile and the road to continuous delivery

Panellists:

Vicki Jackson, Head of Delivery Platforms - Deutsche Bank

DevOps and Agile are widely recognised as keys to better quality assurance and testing, but one size does not fit all. Our experts will share the successes, challenges and obstacles on their DevOps journeys. We will also touch on DevSecOps - how and why it is important that security should be embedded into the SDLC.

11:30 am

Atom Bank’s transition to the cloud: one step at a time

Speaker: Paul Trotter, Deputy CTO - Atom Bank

Managing the transition to the cloud - and ensuring apps are ready for that move - remains a key challenge for financial firms, large and small. Paul Trotter will discuss why Atom Bank took the decision to not launch straight to the cloud in 2016, and why it has waited until now to make the change in tandem with the launch of a new mobile app to complement the move. Paul will detail how Atom is now using the cloud as its platform for CI/CD, and how it is optimised.

12:00 pm

Session reserved for Gold Sponsor

12:30 pm

API Testing for retail and capital markets

This session will discuss the demands of the new open banking landscape, and also the Basel-driven shift from a world of risk modeling to one of real-time risk reporting. The discussion will focus on key technologies for testing APIs, with particular emphasis on containerization and virtualization. As capital markets firms are increasingly looking to link their trading desks, in real-time, to their risk engines trading and risk systems will be upgraded accordingly. Our panellists will discuss the key challenges in testing that multiple data streams are being rendered accurately in these systems and dashboards of both traders and risk managers.

01:00 pm

lunch & networking break

02:00 pm

The latest in automation technologies: virtualization and test environment management

How do firms ensure more effective testing, and not just faster testing? This session will explore different testing methodologies and tools. It will also discuss the building blocks of continuous testing: from test creation to test analytics, in particular the key challenge of test environment management. We will cover the data requirements of the latest automation technologies, including artificial intelligence, and the impact of GDPR requirements on test data management, in particular the growing use of virtualization and containerization.

02:30 pm

AI and other New Technologies for Automation and Compliance

An October 2019 survey by BoE and FCA found that machine learning (ML) in financial organisations has already passed an initial development phase, and the usage of live ML applications is about to dramatically increase over the next three years. Our panellists will talk about how ML, AI, and other technologies are being implemented at their firms, and - more importantly - how the outputs of AI are being tested. They will also discuss how compliance and regulation affect the implementation of new technologies.

03:00 pm

Session reserved for Gold Sponsor

03:30 pm

Coffee & networking break

04:00 pm

Delivering the ultimate mobile UX: testing, from the cloud to the crowd

Panellists:

Giorgos Ampavis, Head of Mobile and Web Engineering - Tide

Better UX is the key to winning market share. This panel session will cover testing options including traditional test farms, cloud-based cross-browser test and also crowd testing. Mindful of planned EU legislation, we will also touch on technologies for testing accessibility for customers with handicaps. And we’ll be asking: how will customers be defining a five-star app experience in 12 months time?

04:30 pm

Managing software vendor risk: How to benchmark code quality

Financial firms they have big decisions to make about how they manage software risk and compliance requirements. This is especially true of decisions around the out-sourcing of code development and testing and also the use of open-source and third-party components. This session will discuss embedding regulatory compliance into outsourcing decisions, how to bench-mark code quality, security and risk, and consider new models for managing off-shoring.

05:00 pm

AI and voice: the future according to Google

Speaker: Vasiliy Malychev, UK Mobile Lead - Google

Voice technologies are a key priority for financial firms, both for customer-facing and internal apps. Vasiliy will discuss some cases of financial firms among Google’s client base, that have successfully - and less successfully - implemented voice technologies. How are technologies for testing AI outputs evolving, and how can firms avoid the pitfall of bias?

Quali is the leading provider of Cloud Sandboxes for automating the DevOps lifecycle. We give innovators control over their world by enabling them to create personalized replicas of even the most complex production environments with "on-demand" Sandboxes. Cloud Providers, Telcos and Enterprises of all sizes including the Global 100 depend on Quali to help them deliver their products and services faster to market with better quality.

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Broadcom delivers modern Continuous Testing solutions to the global enterprise. With BlazeMeter Continuous Testing Platform, the industry's ONLY open source based, AI-driven unified continuous testing solution, organizations can eliminate barriers to quality at speed. Suited for traditional testers, developers, and agile teams, BlazeMeter democratizes testing so everyone is responsible for quality. 7 out of the top 10 largest global financial organizations already depend on Broadcom for their digital success. For more information, visit www.BlazeMeter.com.

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Bronze Sponsors

Applause is the worldwide leader in digital quality and crowdtesting. With highly-vetted testers available on-demand around the globe, Applause provides global brands with a full suite of testing and feedback capabilities. This approach drastically improves testing coverage, eliminates the limitations of offshoring and traditional QA labs, and speeds time-to-market for websites, mobile apps, IoT, and in-store omnichannel experiences.

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