How to Leverage the Benefits of Mobile Banking Performance Benchmarking

Introduction

The finance industry is rapidly evolving due to digital technology. Legacy banking applications face challenges in security, performance, and supporting user growth. Modern performance testing tools often need to align with these legacy systems, risking transaction omissions. "Roll Back" and "Commit" actions are critical for banking apps but are not always supported by current tools.

Efficient load testing is vital to assess the actual capacity of banking applications, ensuring optimal performance during peak times. Performance testing is crucial to identifying vulnerabilities and preventing real-world failures such as memory issues, bandwidth limitations, and load balancing problems. In the digital banking era, performance testing is essential for a seamless customer experience and the industry's success.

In this blog, we'll discuss mobile banking performance benchmarking and its vital role in ensuring the efficiency of banking apps.

Different Types of Performance Testing for Banking Systems

Performance testing is crucial for assessing the robustness of banking systems. Here are the key types of performance testing used in the banking industry:

• Load Testing: This evaluates a system's ability to handle real-world user loads, ideally conducted before application deployment.
• Stress Testing: Stress tests, implemented more widely after the 2008 financial crisis, determine if a bank has sufficient capital to withstand extreme financial scenarios, measuring the application's breaking point.
• Endurance Testing: Ensures the system can sustain continuous loads, often seen on bank closing days, using benchmarks established during initial performance testing.
• Volume Testing: Injects a large amount of data into a database suddenly, simulating scenarios like significant financial transactions. This assesses the system's handling of data volume response time and identifies bottlenecks.
• Scalability Testing: Assesses the application's adaptability to increasing productivity as banks grow and expand.
• Spike Testing: Evaluates how a system responds to sudden spikes or drops in user load, such as during utility bill deadlines, ensuring system stability during peak usage.

These performance testing types, including a crucial focus on mobile banking performance benchmarks, contribute significantly to maintaining the reliability and efficiency of banking systems, safeguarding against potential issues, and enhancing the overall user experience.

Optimal Timing for Performance Testing in Banking and Finance Apps

Determining the timing for performance testing in the context of mobile banking performance benchmarking is critical for banking applications. These systems process countless transactions daily, where performance goes beyond mere speed; it's about reliability and resource utilization.

Starting performance testing at an early development stage is the key to identifying and addressing significant issues from the outset. It's a holistic approach that looks beyond superficial indicators like response times to uncover and resolve underlying vulnerabilities.

Banking app testing typically focuses on three core areas: the digital interface, core banking functionality, and overall banking operations. This comprehensive approach involves collaboration between business and quality analysts to align with the bank's technological and business requirements.

The golden rule in performance testing is to initiate it at the earliest feasible point, ensuring a thorough examination of bottlenecks and performance issues. By doing so, the entire banking system's performance can be systematically enhanced to provide a robust, reliable, and efficient experience for users.

How to Initiate Performance Testing for Banking and Finance Apps

Starting performance testing for banking applications requires a well-defined strategy to set the groundwork for successful execution. With a clear framework, it becomes easier to establish timelines, allocate roles, and estimate the project's budget accurately.

To ensure a systematic approach, it's essential to understand the step-by-step process of banking application testing. While the specifics may vary based on the app's scale, business objectives, and features, the general procedure aligns with an agile application development lifecycle.

● Requirement Gathering and Analysis

The testing process begins with requirement analysis, where the testing team evaluates the testing requirements, encompassing both functional and non-functional aspects. They delve into functionality, speed, reliability, availability, and security. Domain knowledge and industry-specific expertise are crucial for creating a comprehensive testing process.

● Test Case Development

This phase involves creating test cases and corresponding scripts, aligning with the identified features and their requirements. Testers also establish the necessary testing data. The organization of test cases into functionality modules helps ensure comprehensive coverage, addressing aspects like user experience, functionality, load balancing, and security.

● Configuring the Test Environment

The test environment mimics the end-users' working conditions and is critical in the testing procedure. It should ideally replicate the conditions of both internal bank environments and end-user settings, facilitating the assessment of core banking issues and end-customer experiences.

● Implementing Test Design

During this phase, tests are developed, accounting for both front-end and back-end sessions. This is particularly important for applications like Temenos T24, which incorporate Java servlets and additional security layers.

● Execution

Testers execute the tests according to the approved test strategy to identify real-time issues faced by customers and internal bank teams. This phase assesses the application's threshold and infrastructure sustainability, uncovering performance issues within the banking system.

● Analysis, Reporting, and Retesting

After completing the performance test run, the testing team compiles results into a comprehensive report. This report highlights key issues, observations, and statistics, offering recommendations to enhance the system's performance characteristics.

In a constantly evolving banking software landscape, the performance testing process, including the assessment of mobile banking performance benchmarks, remains a cornerstone for reliability and quality. While banks must adapt to new trends and meet evolving requirements, a robust performance testing approach ensures that their infrastructure and services meet customer needs efficiently.

Read: Testing Challenges in Internet and Mobile Banking

Developing a Benchmarking Framework for Mobile Banking Performance Metrics

While there's no shortage of metrics that banks can define and track, it's essential to consider the cost of performance measurement. Tracking metrics that don't contribute to informed decision-making for business executives is a futile endeavor.

Banks require a digital banking metrics framework that balances the number and focus of tracked metrics. Cornerstone recommends that banks embrace a framework that categorizes digital banking metrics into five key areas:

• Investment: These metrics gauge the amount of resources invested in various areas. This can include absolute dollar amounts, investments as a percentage of all channel investments, IT investments, or total assets.
• Adoption: This metric assesses how many individuals use a specific service or capability. Adoption can be examined within particular population segments, such as the percentage of Millennials using a product or service or checking account customers utilizing online or mobile banking.
• Usage: Beyond knowing how many people use a product or service, understanding how often and to what extent they use it is crucial.
• Efficiency: These metrics delve into the cost of delivering a particular product or service. It also explores the cost relative to the level of adoption and usage.
• Output: Finally, this metric evaluates the benefits and results derived from the resources invested in the digital channel.

A well-defined digital banking metrics framework ensures that the metrics tracked are not only comprehensive but also contribute to more informed and effective decision-making.

Effective Tips and Best Practices for High-Performing Banking and Finance Apps

Highly rated apps didn't achieve their success by chance; rigorous testing, including the assessment of mobile banking performance benchmarks, played a pivotal role. Consider these strategies to expedite your operations, yield quicker results, and bring thoroughly validated, optimally functioning software to market.

1. Device Selection: Choose the right mix of devices and browsers based on your users' geographic locations. Test on the devices and browsers your customers use most frequently for comprehensive coverage.‍
2. Expand Use Cases: Apps don't exist in isolation; they must undergo testing in real user conditions. Evaluate your app's performance when faced with competing apps, poor network coverage, and similar scenarios. For instance, test functionalities like 'Find an ATM Near Me' across all ATM locations to avoid testing gaps.‍
3. Accessibility Testing: Automate accessibility testing and integrate it into your test cycles. This ensures user satisfaction and compliance with software standards and prevents potential business losses, as accessibility significantly impacts app performance.‍
4. Security Testing: Banking apps, in particular, require robust security testing. Automate testing for security features like touch ID, face ID, and two-factor authentication to ensure basic security configurations function correctly.‍
5. Increased Automation: Expand automation beyond software development engineers in test (SDETs). Incorporate codeless automation tools and low-code behavior-driven development (BDD) frameworks to involve business testers and developers in the automation process.‍
6. Complex Scenarios: Banking apps often encounter complex scenarios, such as mobile check deposits. Utilize a commercial testing platform to automate testing for image injection (check deposits) and audio injection/validation (chatbots and personal assistants).‍
7. Parallel Execution: Enhance parallel testing by executing multiple tests simultaneously on different platforms. This approach broadens test coverage, accelerates execution, and identifies and resolves issues earlier in the development cycle.‍
8. Simulators and Emulators: While testing on real devices is ideal, adding Android and iOS simulators to your testing strategy expands coverage cost-effectively and reduces defects that slip through.‍
9. Swift Issue Resolution: Improve your feedback cycle by swiftly analyzing test failures and reporting. This aids in identifying real defects efficiently and resolving them promptly, reducing lag time in issue fixes.

Enhancing Financial Process Performance and Efficiency: HeadSpin's Advanced App Testing Solutions for Global Banking Organizations

1. Elevating Digital Experiences with AI ML

• Seamless Apps: HeadSpin employs AI and ML to create banking apps with exceptional usability, user interfaces, and unwavering performance. We focus on AI-driven insights and UI analysis, enhancing user experiences and identifying crucial features. We also prioritize analyzing network data and device performance for superior digital experiences.

2. Swift Time-to-Market with Continuous Testing

• Efficient Development: HeadSpin's continuous testing solution significantly reduces QA time during mobile banking app development. Our quick and constant feedback streamlines testing, ensuring security and efficiency in rapid development cycles.

3. Proactive Error Detection via Root-Cause Analysis

• Error Prevention: HeadSpin empowers banks with root-cause analysis, identifying errors in apps and payment features. Proactive error handling reduces development costs and enhances the customer experience.

4. Secure Cloud Testing Solutions

• Enhanced Security: HeadSpin's global device infrastructure offers flexible cloud options, from secure on-premise to private cloud, tailored to your security needs. Our global device testing facilities enable remote testing, safeguarding your app's security.

Final Thoughts

The significance of performance testing, including the assessment of mobile banking performance benchmarks, in banking applications cannot be overstated. Given the immense volumes of sensitive data they handle, thorough testing is not merely an option but a necessity. A flawed testing process for banking web applications jeopardizes customers and their financial assets.

At HeadSpin, we bring a wealth of expertise to testing banking applications. Our seasoned professionals possess the acumen to unearth underlying issues within banking and finance applications. Our mission is clear: to ensure these apps operate securely, reliably, and with peak efficiency.

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FAQs

Q1. What is the role of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in assessing financial performance?

Ans: Financial KPIs, or metrics, are quantifiable values that indicate a company's financial performance. They offer insights into expenses, sales, profit, and cash flow, aiding in the optimization and achievement of a business's financial goals and objectives.

Q2. What Are Performance Bugs and Their Implications?

Ans: Performance bugs encompass issues related to the speed, stability, response time, and reactivity of software or applications. These bugs are typically discovered through performance testing and can substantially influence the user experience. They often lead to user frustration and hinder productivity.