With the progress of the financial industry and information technology, the growth of commercial banks’ development is immediately dependent on the core banking systems. As the demands of the clients increase, the core banking software has become more complex, Meanwhile, the core banking testing has been to the joint between banking information system and banking business. The testing process is extremely important, and it is performed in many phases and strategies. In this article, you will find everything you want to know about core banking testing.

Core Banking Systems

The core banking system is the software used by commercial banks and financial institutions to support a bank’s most common transactions. It provides administration of clients, accounts, loans, credits, deposits, accounting, and payments.

Gartner defines a core banking system as a back-end system that processes daily banking transactions and posts updates to accounts and other financial records.

Core banking technology authorizes a bank to centralize its record-keeping and allows clients to access their information and stay connected with the bank because this system is designed to operate 24/7.

Core Banking Functions

Before the 1970s, it used to take at least a day for any transaction in your account. The improvements in software reduced human resource needs at the banks and increased efficiency and reliability. Banks make these services available across multiple channels like automated teller machines, Internet banking, mobile banking, and branches. A core banking system is a software used to support a bank’s most common transactions as follows:

• Making and servicing loans.
• Opening new accounts.
• Processing payments and cheques.
• Processing cash deposits and withdrawals.
• Customer relationship management (CRM) activities.
• Managing customer accounts.
• Establish criteria for minimum balances and the number of withdrawals allowed.
• Maintaining records for all the bank’s transactions.

What is core banking testing?

Assuring the quality of core banking systems is integral to the reputation and existence of banks systems. The complexities of these systems make financial software testing an absolutely necessary need. So, all core banking services have to go through strict, continuous testing to achieve high-quality performance and to evaluate the progress of work in all aspects.

The primary goal of testing core banking is to make sure that all the activities and functionalities of a banking software run smoothly without errors and it remains secure and safe. This can be achieved by many phases and techniques that are explained below.

The importance of core banking testing

The following points show the importance of implementing software testing for core banking systems:

1. The core banking testing process for financial systems ensures that all banking transactions are executed correctly and accurately as well as remain safe and secure.
2. The testing process needs more time, resources, and continuous monitoring. That is because of complicated systems that have many consequences of any errors, so it is necessary to ensure the quality increasingly.
3. It has to be ensured that the guidelines and regulations are executed correctly in financial transactions. This can only be ensured with testing.
4. Having errors in financial processes means losing some or all of those resources, so preserving financial resources is the main purpose of banking systems.
5. Core banking testing can prove that the financial systems are running on a secure and balanced infrastructure, especially during peak hours.
6. The financial transactions that are performed within the core banking system need to be secure from any attempt to break-in. This can be ensured by the testing process.

Test Phases in Core Banking Testing

For core banking testing, there are different technical steps that must be performed carefully and accurately:

1. Requirement Identification: it is the first stage in testing that is done by banking experts or business analysts; requirements for the system are gathered, documented, and validated.
2. Requirement Review: after identifying the requirements, it needs additional refinement. In this stage, quality analysts, business analysts, and development leads are involved to review and auditing workflows.
3. Business Cases Processing: QA Engineers derive Business Scenarios from the requirement documents, then they develop use cases and functions by which they ensure that all work cases are covered.
4. Functional testing. QA specialists run some tests like Test Case preparation, test case review, and test case execution to ensure main user workflows can be carried out without bugs or errors.
5. Database Testing: This testing is done to ensure data integrity, data loading, stored procedures, data reliability, and functions validation.
6. Security Testing: It ensures that the software does not have any security flaws. For Security Testing, automation tools like IBM AppScan and HPWebInspect are used while Manual Testing tools like Proxy Sniffer, Paros proxy, HTTP watch, etc. are used to prevent any unauthorized transactions.
7. Integration Testing: Under Integration Testing all components that are developed are integrated and validated.
8. User Acceptance Testing: The development team needs to be confident that end users will be satisfied with the core banking system’s functionality.

TesetCrew – Your Software Partner

TestCrew is keen to implement quality tests regularly as well as provide international standards software-testing training. TestCrew also provides all technical, functional, and non-functional software quality test services related to user experience, which ensure the security and protection of end products from vulnerabilities and the risks of penetration, as per the standards of ISTQB and Test Maturity Model Integration Professional certification (TMMi).

In addition to that, TestCrew also offers software quality consulting services, you can also know more about what we do by visiting the various communication channels mentioned on our page, LinkedIn, email, or through our unified number.