GOAL

Update the client’s legacy OS/2 banking application and offer new solutions to broaden the customer base, diversify loans range, enhance the performance, and introduce new features to attract new customers. The project also aimed to digitize and accelerate the loan evaluation and approval process.

BACKGROUND

The bank’s Credit Department relied on a legacy OS/2 banking application running on the mainframe to collect and maintain vital information about clients, loans, credit scores, mortgages, and other important data. However, the bank’s outdated IT infrastructure became hard to manage, and upgrading the mainframe application was getting increasingly difficult. This was causing the bank to lose customers and market share.

CHALLENGES

• The bank’s legacy application was inflexible and could not adapt to the rapidly changing business environment.
• The bank’s application could not integrate fully into the rest of the business environment due to the complexity of the mainframe, putting the application data and functionality into a silo.
• The application took too long to perform basic functions, leading to increasing customer dissatisfaction and loss. A customer had to wait for 2-3 days to get response from the bank.
• None of the application’s processes were fully automated, causing delays, errors, and development bottlenecks.
• The bank’s internal IT teams were not able to complete the project due to bigger problems in their business, infrastructure, and legacy processes.
• The waterfall approach became a bottleneck for innovation, slowing down the software development process and limiting flexibility in response to changing requirements.

KEY OBJECTIVES

• Improve the application’s performance and extend its feature set
• Modernize the client’s mainframe as a whole to meet a full range of business requirements
• Minimize risks during the transition
• Integrate the application with the rest of the business environment to eliminate data silos
• Create APIs that enable users to retrieve information through a web-based user interface
• Relieve the burden on internal IT teams
• Automate manual processes to reduce delays and errors

SOLUTION

The bank decided to keep the mainframe but take a new, modernized approach to managing it and developing applications faster and more efficiently.

The bank collaborated with IBA Group’s mainframe teams to help solve the challenges. IBA Group worked to untangle the complex patchwork of different solutions within the mainframe. They introduced new problem-solving strategies and approaches, including Agile methodologies, to help the bank’s internal IT teams break away from old school ways of doing things.

IBA Group also used their rare skills in the COBOL programming language to fix and extend the application. They automated many of the manual processes that had been causing delays and errors, which freed up the internal IT teams to focus on other tasks. IBA Group also integrated the application more fully into the bank’s wider business environment, reducing its siloed status.

RESULTS

By partnering with IBA Group, the bank was able to modernize the application and  entire mainframe system, develop new features and capabilities, unload the support burden off their internal IT teams, and deliver measurable ROI including:

• Increasing the number of loans issued each day by 140%
• Accelerating loan approvals from 3-4 banking days to just a few seconds
• Reducing the time to onboard a new employee by 3 times

Retaining all features of the legacy application, the new solution provided enhanced functionality and was fully integrated into the customer’s corporate landscape.

The new system reduced manual data entry, automated repetitive activities, and minimized the number of delays and errors, which significantly increased the efficiency of the Bank’s Credit Department.

The new application was highly scalable and with improved performance and stability, supporting more than 3,000 concurrent users.

Employees of the Credit Department were able to get access to credit scoring in real time. This happened because all related applications and databases were integrated by API.

Overall, improved functionality and new features of the application helped the bank expand their client base and provide a wider range of loans, along with faster and more efficient loan evaluations and approvals.

TECHNOLOGY STACK

Programming languages: PLI, COBOL, and specially developed procedure language which automatically generates source code in Cobol for user screens

Messaging: IBM MQ

Scheduling: TWS (former OPC)

Databases: VSAM and lately added DB2 databases

Transactioning: CICS

Author: Maryia Kharitcheva

In its most recent brief on migration and development, the World Bank estimates that the volume of remittances will reach USD 630 billion by the end of this year, marking a 4.2-percent increase year-over-year.

As a rule, global financial institutions consider remittances as relatively non-significant amounts of money sent from one individual to a household or another individual residing in low- and middle-income countries. These transfers, however, empower people around the world to support their friends and families in times of war, pandemic, or any other tragic circumstances. Remittances are often a lifeline for those in need.

Unlike sending money as a birthday gift or chipping in to purchase a new piece of furniture together with your loved ones, for many, remittances are not a question of merely exchanging monetary value; they are a matter of survival. That is why it is imperative that money transfer businesses (MTBs) operate 24/7 and ensure that the cross-border transaction always ends up in the account of the specified recipient on time.

Just as in the broader financial services market, there are a wealth of factors that determine a company’s ability to be stable and deliver in the money transmission business. Quality assurance and test automation are one of the lesser visible yet utmostly vital mechanisms that fuel the engine.

Why Automated Testing is Essential for Banking

In this article, we will look at quality assurance and, more precisely, automated testing in the banking sector through the lens of a regular MTB.

When someone wants to send money, they first need to sign up for the service they plan on using. The registration process normally requires first and last names, an e-mail address, a password, and a phone number. Automated testing helps MTBs use test cases for mobile banking applications to check different scenarios and find out whether the application behaves as intended — and, if not, what response that unexpected behavior triggers. For example, if the user enters a name that consists of one character only, the system must return an error. The same goes for a password that is not strong enough or has been compromised in the past (remember that we are talking about financial transactions here), an e-mail address that contains a non-existent domain zone (hence the user’s inability to receive critical notifications), or a phone number that is one digit short.

Once the user has successfully signed up and confirmed their e-mail, they need to be able to log in. Once again, financial data is super-sensitive and fragile, so an MTB may decide to offer — or even enforce — a two-factor authentication (2FA) for all their customers. That would require querying an API of a certain provider (for example, Google Authenticator) and executing functional regression testing — the automated one.

Before allowing one to make payments, some MTBs also mandate that the user undergo KYC (Know-Your-Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) identity verification procedures. These are multi-layered, meaning the customer needs to submit their passport information and pictures or pass a video interview with a compliance officer. Now, a number of MTBs do not have an in-house compliance team, so they often employ services of third-party providers, meaning test automation becomes even more vital.

Once the user is all set and good-to-go, they need to add their card. For that, they have to enter the cardholder name in English, the card number itself, as well as the expiration date and the CVV number. Automated testing helps ensure that all expected validations on the data entered by the user are performed. For example, the card number must contain the correct number of digits, the expiration date must be adequate (no bank issues cards before 2099, right?), and the CVC code must be three digits long. If the user enters data in an inappropriate format, the application does not allow the user to finalize the action. The next step is contacting the card issuer — or a bank — and verifying all the data, a process that needs to be rigorously tested as well.

After completing the transfer, a receipt should be generated and delivered to the sender’s inbox either automatically or on-demand. These steps should also be tested because the recipient may very much need this document to prove the source of income should a corresponding request arrive from their domestic tax authority.

Last but not least, think of a situation when an MTB decides to introduce a new feature — for example, a recurring payment for when the sender knows exactly the amount the recipient will need on a monthly basis over the next half-year. Regression testing is mandatory here to make sure that by injecting a new functionality you do not break the ones that have already existed. And automated testing does an excellent job here.

Banking QA: Bottom Line

To sum it up, QA in finance rewards both money transmission service providers and their clientele substantially.

The former can speed up time-to-market for new functionalities, reduce costs and latency, and boost revenues due to test automation. The latter make timely transfers that will land at the destination account without interruption, helping the recipient carry on and live another day.

There are numerous challenges that quality assurance in general and test automation specifically can help banking services like this overcome. When you think of it, MTBs offer multiple interfaces at once, meaning you can send money either from a web or a mobile application. Those two need to be interconnected and sync data in real time. Now, there are different tools for you to test on different environments individually, but we at IBA Group decided that there needs to be a one-stop solution — and that is how we came up with JuNaSe.

If you are a money transfer business representative, please check out the suite of test automation services we provide for our partners in the banking area.

Author: Maryia Kharitcheva

An international company whose offerings include taxi buying, loans, and insurance approached us with a request to develop a scalable test automation solution suitable for various environments.

The main focus of the company’s activity is consumer financing and lending services. The system includes several web applications that let you set up and control a full cycle of business processes, making sure that your key targets are met.

The company decided to partner with IBA Group based on feedback from a large bank, for which we had successfully implemented an automated functional testing project before.

Challenges

The company’s system itself is a large-scale application with numerous business functions. Its automated scripts were aimed to solve the following problems:

• Long time dedicated to running regression testing
• The need to test applications on several environments and browsers
• High load on the QA team, who spent lots of time, effort, and consequently, money on manual tests
• Ever-growing testing expenditures that arose from the previous point
• Lack of timely and comprehensive reporting of test results

Key Objectives

1. Investigation of tasks and the tech used to develop the system as a set of applications interconnected via a single business logic. For example, the first application sees the order being placed, the second one sees the manager process it, while the third automatically generates the corresponding agreement
2. Selection of a proper tech stack and QA testing tools in order to build the testing automation process
3. Development of a BDD methodology-based test framework allowing the design testing of E2E scenarios and ensuring test data transferability across applications is integrated within the system
4. Coverage of the system’s complex, wide-ranging functionality by autotests
5. Integration of automated testing with CI/CD
6. User-friendly and prompt reporting functionality

Solutions

We undertook the following major testing automation stages:

1. Discovery of the client’s needs
2. Analysis of the client’s current system
3. Adoption of suitable automated testing types
4. Fine tune
5. Test data preparation and development of automated test cases
6. Launch of automated testing and report generation
7. Ongoing maintenance

Benefits for the Customer

As part of our cooperation, we helped the customer achieve the following outcomes:

● Architect a smooth, scalable testing automation process for its system’s functional capabilities

● Configure the launch of tests in the CI/CD environment and identify shortcomings faster and earlier. What we mean by ‘shortcomings’ here is application defects of any kind, such as bugs. We set up scheduled auto-test launches, so when an employee gets to a workplace in the morning, they see a report that contains the results of running (or not running) tests — and the tests can be run at any time, 24/7. If something malfunctions or simply does not work as intended, the employee is notified straight away and passes the issue to developers who can then swiftly fix it. It is of vital importance because the sooner the defect is discovered, the cheaper it is to remove, meaning it will not ultimately reach the production stage and by proxy, the user. As a result, we see more affordable resolution expenses and faster release times

● Cover part of the client’s system functionality with autotests

● Generate insightful and readily available results of automatic tests

● Obtain information on test stats thanks to our data-driven testing framework and user-friendly visualization of that data, made accessible from an intuitive interface

● Share these reports not only with the tech team, but also with business people since they are written in plain English and include screenshots and logs. They also show general automated testing indicators, such as time used to run, the total number of tests carried out, the passed versus failed scenarios diagram, and much more.

Read to learn more about our automated testing services and JuNaSe, our license-free full-cycle automated testing and quality assurance solution.

BACKGROUND

Our client is a prominent financial institution based in Eastern Europe, specializing in providing a wide range of banking services to both individual and corporate clients. They are recognized for their innovative banking solutions and significant contribution to the economic development of their region. The client required the implementation of a detailed budgeting process to achieve a comprehensive balance sheet, including both planned and actual figures, in accordance with IFRS standards.

CHALLENGES

• Development of a budgeting system.
• Automation of budgeting business processes: preparation and revision of the annual budget.
• Increasing planning quality using an improved methodology.

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

• Planning and consolidation business processes analysis has been achieved.
• OLAP cubes have been developed and business processes have been configured.
• Automation of calculations of regulated reports and master budget using settings.
• The turnover balance sheet with the actual data and automated calculation of the actual balance loaded.

KEY RESULTS

The customer began to understand his business much better in terms of factors that affect the financial result. This was achieved thanks to the following actions from our side:

• Improved financial planning process.
• Increased transparency in the results from work divisions, and greater staff interest in improving the bank’s financial results.
• Improved manageability and coordination of business units.
• Continuous automated monitoring of budget execution.
• The realization of support for a full and closed planning cycle from input of operating budgets (more than 100) to the approval of the plan and the construction of consolidated statements. This is in accordance with the requirements of both management accounting and the parent bank.
• Reduction in budgeting time — despite employing a significantly more complex model — from 90 to 10 days. In addition, the preparation of a budget for a new business scenario now takes one day instead of a month.

BACKGROUND

Our client is a multinational technology and consulting firm, renowned for its contributions to the development of computer hardware and software. They required help to identify which projects within the company were generating profits and which were not meeting financial expectations. This evaluation was necessary to optimize resource allocation and improve overall business efficiency.

CHALLENGES

• Profitability calculation and P&L construction for BM Global Business Support projects, including analytics by region, industry, and client cluster.
• Constructing of a calculated target model.

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

• Creating and optimizing applications in IBM Analytics Planning.
• Writing scripts to calculate targets.
• Integration with external systems and development of ETL procedures to obtain data from third-party sources.
• Using a Java user interface for direct access to cubes (via REST API).
• Presenting data both in cubes for data input and reporting cubes, organizing export/import of data.
• Setting up access rights and monitoring the work of users.

KEY RESULTS

1. Improving the relevance and reliability of profit and loss statement calculations for current and planned projects.
2. Stable system operation under high loads thanks to an optimal calculation process and system configuration.
3. Expansion of the system to cover LA (Latin America), EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), and APAC (Asia Pacific) regions with consideration to regional specifics.

BACKGROUND

Our client is a tire manufacturer with a robust presence in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and is distinguished by its commitment to advancing tire technology. The client required efficient management of their corporate revenues and expenses.

CHALLENGES

• Development of the existing budgeting system on Oracle Hyperion Planning 11
• Migration to SAP Analytics Cloud Planning

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

• Design and development of new calculation rules and data entry forms.
• Loading data from SAP and other sources.
• Daily monitoring of the system.
• Monitoring the correctness of the calculations.
• User support in different regions of Europe.
• Transferring the business logic to a new solution based on SAP Analytics Cloud Planning.
• Using REST API for data access.

KEY RESULTS

1/ Forms, calculation rules, measurement elements and more have been updated.

2/ Reduced by one-third the number of incidents related to:

• Proactive work with users
• Optimizing ETL processes

3/ A qualified team with competencies in Oracle Hyperion Planning 11 has been created.

4/ A working prototype of the solution has been created through SAP Analytics Cloud Planning in close collaboration with the customer’s team.

BACKGROUND

Our client is a banking entity in Eastern Europe, known for offering a broad spectrum of financial services to both individual and corporate clients. The client needed a solution to effectively manage and optimize their enterprise’s financial performance, focusing on both enhancing revenue and controlling expenses.

CHALLENGES

• Designing and creating a budgeting system for all core and supplementary budgets, such as OPEX, CAPEX, and more.
• Acceleration of budgeting, negotiation and approval processes.
• Scenario modeling and forecasting.
• Exploring the possibility of correct budgets according to budget methodology.
• Creating a system of analytical reporting: plan/fact/variance.
• Training users to work in the system and providing support in day-to-day activities.

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

• Development of the solution architecture and its integration into the existing IT landscape, together with the methodologist and the bank’s IT team.
• Implementation of a budgeting system using IBM Cognos Planning.
• Realization of the main and auxiliary budgets calculations: operational activity budgets, non-operational expenses, capital expenses, etc.
• Implementation of basic normative calculations, such as capital adequacy ratio, instant liquidity ratio, current liquidity ratio, ratio of operating assets to non-operating assets, ratio of non-operating expenses to operating profit.
• Performance optimization of cubes.
• User access rights management according to the bank’s policy.
• Work with users — options for working with data both through an add-on in Excel and through the web interface.

KEY RESULTS

• Transition from Excel planning to a full-fledged budgeting system.
• Significant reduction of the budgeting process from months to 2 weeks.
• Accurate scenario analysis and profitability calculation of banking products.
• Control and monitoring of expense limitation and rationing in different fields, e.g. time, cost and profit centers.
• Ability to modeling the optimal size of administrative and economic expenses, depending on the level of bank business activity and separate business directions.
• Ensuring data security through the delimitation of access within the system.

Challenges

1. Seamlessly blending modern solutions with the financial institution’s existing legacy systems
2. Providing systems that can handle exponential data growth without performance hitches
3. Navigating changes in financial regulations across regions
4. Continuously innovating in a rapidly evolving technology landscape
5. Data Ocean Design based on the Data Vault methodology
6. Presentation Layer Design for reporting systems – Mart and Dimensions
7. Row Level Security implementation for secure access by end users to the reporting system

Goals

1. Develop a Cloud-Based Financial Risk Analysis Platform
2. Build Purchase to Pay Golden Model
3. Design a User-Friendly Order-to-Cash Reporting System

Results

1. Optimized efficient data management, operational processes: transaction processing, risk assessment customer service
2. Enabled data scientists and other programmers to leverage innovations such as AI and ML efficiently
3. Created a data model for deep analysis, strategic planning, and forecasting
4. Built Purchase to Pay and Order to Cash Golden Models that allow end users to construct reports themselves in a BI tool

Challenges

Automate reporting processes triggered by a timer event and integrate them with the subsequent approval process, thereby streamlining the entire workflow.

Solution Highlights

Our client faced significant challenges in automating reporting processes.

There was the only employee in charge of making sure that the schedule was adhered to and that the necessary approvals were obtained in the order.

This manual approach was time consuming, error prone and inefficient, leading to delays and inconsistencies in reporting and approval.

Results

1. The system easily adapts to business growth, scaling to accommodate new reports and approval workflows.
2. Automated triggers and approval sequences have clarified roles and increased accountability across departments.
3. Efficient workflow has speeded up the decision-making process.
4. Higher employee satisfaction.

Challenges

The biggest challenge was using on-premises infrastructure, which brought with it the constant need to support the hardware in the face of increasing data volumes. The bank required new approaches to working with data that the current infrastructure could not support. In light of this, it turned to IBA Group in search of a solution to the several competing challenges it faced.