A survey by Foresight Research stated that the number of customers leaving their current financial institution to a new one is 27% between 2020 and 2022 as compared to the pre-pandemic times which was 12%. Hence, the most pressing question is – why are customers upset about their current financial institution?

Talking about customers and their requirements, it is interesting to know that banks and other financial institutions have, over the years, considered ‘customer-centric’ approach rather than the traditional ‘business-centric’ approach. This accounts for millennials and Gen Zs, who form the major part of the current customer base. Today, customer experience holds highest priority in financial organizations. Now, coming to the fundamental aspect – what must banks do in order to up their customer experience game?

Answer: Digital Assurance Testing

Wait! Before you contradict this answer, let us explain why we chose what we chose.

What is Digital Assurance Testing?

According to Insider Intelligence, in the U.S. alone, around 75.4% of the population is penetrating to the digital banking world. It is quite obvious that this is only going to increase, which means banks have to think through their digital banking strategies.

One of these strategies is testing and with digitization increasing in the banking frontline, it is time for financial institutions to view testing through digital lens.

In simple words, Digital Assurance Testing is an ecosystem that aims to build a digital banking sovereign that is resilient, easy, and safe. With plenty of tech trends like contactless payments, paperless onboarding, etc., bombarding the financial world, institutions have to religiously follow the testing process to ensure their end-product satisfies customer needs effectively.

Digital Assurance helps financial institutions holistically tackle all the digital-based issues related to performance, scalability, cloud, security, etc. It includes a set of practices followed routinely to keep a check on the effectiveness of all the digital financing aspects.

Why Digital Assurance Testing?

Here are some reasons Digital Assurance Testing is a requisite for banks:

1.Achieving customer experience is exhausting

The aim of financial institutions is to provide state-of-the-art customer experience. However, amongst juggling between front, middle, and back-end issues, user experience almost looks diminishing to the tech experts. Hence, they need a proper system that helps in debugging errors and giving them the time to concentrate on user experience enhancements.

Recommended Read: Retail & Corporate Banks Shift Focus to Gen Z Customers for a Digital Banking Experience

2.Added security risks

One of the major disadvantages of digitization in financial institutions is the added cyber security threats. This is how financial stakeholders think, but in reality, it is not as big a threat as it pretends to be. You think we are overconfident?
No, Digital Assurance Testing is effective enough as it helps handle risks at every stage to prevent major risks. With proper record of tracks and configuration, it helps to nullify the vulnerability of digital banking platform to the security threats.

Recommended Read: Why should banks focus on data privacy while collecting customer data?

3.Forced faster time-to-market

Digital has welcomed a plethora of features and offerings like Spend Analytics, targeted marketing, etc., into the banking world. These options seem endless, which means customers are keen to try all. This also puts banks in a pressure to launch products faster into the markets whilst ensuring efficiency.
In order to achieve this herculean task, financial organizations need a stronger weapon by their side, which is Digital Assurance Testing. While stakeholders are busy brainstorming the features to help tech experts in developing those, Digital Assurance facilitates a smooth process by tracking down issues and categorizing it for easy debugging.

4.‘Legacy’ shall never leave your back

A lot of financial organizations are still sticking to their legacy due to various reasons. However, they are also looking for ways to modernize their systems to incorporate all the features. What goes unnoticed are the added efforts to keep the entire architecture operational because legacy poses as the hurdle. Hence, bankers have to gear up for this hurdle via a strong testing platform.

Recommended Read: Legacy Modernization is a Big Deal for Banks and Here’s Why

5.Banking resiliency looks like a pipe dream

Achieving a digital platform that works with minimal performance issues, caters to the real-time needs of the customers, takes load with no lags, all the while standing as a rock against the barriers of security threats seems impossible. However, with Digital Assurance testing, this dream has some chances of becoming a reality, as it works towards achieving the end target.

6.Dynamic banking: Sounds interesting but is a daunting feat

Imagine your customer started a banking process on your laptop and mid-way, they want to continue the same via mobile. Financial organizations must begin to understand this and cater to the comfort of the consumer, they have to be dynamic and process real-time requests as fast as possible. While the entire process seems fascinating, a minor glitch might cost the institution a customer. Hence, Digital Assurance has to be a mandate in this process to ensure real-time efficiency of financial organizations. This is because a major part of Digital Assurance Testing consists of automation framework that helps manage real-time issues in a faster and accurate manner.

Conclusion

The good news is that banks and other financial institutions are considering digital banking seriously and are moving forward with it in different ways. Digital banking has a lot of advantages and going forward will be an integral part of customer-banking relationship lifecycle. While digital in financial institution is the marvel team, Digital Assurance is the ‘Hulk’.

 

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