How to Do Automated Testing in Banking With Codeless Selenium

Most organizations use Selenium to do automated testing of their web-based applications, but in a banking domain, it doesn’t always make sense.

Banking organizations rely on a complex web of systems across desktops, browsers, mainframe, and mobile. Testing them all with Selenium isn’t possible, since Selenium only works for web testing.

You have:

• The web server an end-user interacts with via a browser like Chrome or Internet Explorer.
• The application tier used for validating and processing the webserver input and output.
• The database tier where information is stored and managed.
• The transaction processing often carried out by Mainframes for applications dependent on scalability and reliability. E.g. large-scale transaction processing.

So while Selenium can be used to test browser-based processes, teams have to rely on a combination of manual testing, automation frameworks, and automation vendors to regression test their ecosystem end-to-end.

Why financial institutions should choose their automated testing solution with caution

An explosion of funding into new FinTech solutions has put increased pressure on traditional banks to modernize their services.

They are expected to get applications and features to market faster, reduce the cost and risk of errors, increase their financial return, all the while keeping their hiring costs down.

This weight falls on development teams who are expected to update and release changes to their system faster than before.

Why is this a problem?

When you release changes to your system, your regression testing suite grows. Manually testing a regression suite takes a lot of resources to carry out and opens businesses up to human error.

Taking this approach with Selenium automation also carries its own challenges. It requires heavy maintenance, and it doesn’t cover non-web-based systems.

If businesses continue using solutions that slow down the release of their services (like code-based test automation tools and manual testing), competitors will continue to eat away at their market share.

The challenges of manual testing, selenium testing, automation frameworks, and mainframe testing in banking

• Manual testing takes time, and it is prone to human error.
• Selenium testing is dependent on coding experience and prevents domain experts without coding experience from automating.
• Selenium testing can only automate browser applications. It cannot automate across non-web-based systems.
• An automation framework takes a lot of resources to build and maintain.
• Most financial institutions rely on mainframe to run their most critical business processes. Selenium can’t be used here. (Here’s how to automate mainframe with codeless automation).

These challenges stop teams from rolling out releases, updates, and system changes at speed.

So what can FI’s do to speed up their testing?

Often, businesses look to automation to relieve the burden that comes with testing, only to find that they are spending more resources and time on maintaining the automation.

This is the case for many businesses relying on code-based frameworks.
It requires a high level of programming knowledge to adopt a functioning solution.

This, of course, keeps business experts from contributing to test automation.

And, it prevents businesses from keeping pace with the competition.

This is where codeless automation comes in.

Benefits of codeless automated testing in banking

No-code automation tools narrow the communication gap between team members. Everyone can create, share and understand automated test cases.

It means businesses can achieve:

Faster release cycles. Leapwork’s visual building blocks make it easier to turn repetitive process steps into reusable components (like login-logout requirements). Change it in one place, and it will update everywhere else. This makes automation easier to manage and maintain. Teams can quickly create complex automation flows across a system, whether it’s on desktop, web, mainframe or mobile, and all in one place.

Lower hiring costs. A visual language, as opposed to coded automation, means that businesses can build automation faster, and test at a higher capacity without adding additional, costly resources. When more people can contribute to automation, a collaboration between QA managers, testers, and developers becomes much easier, and teams can respond quickly to changes in requirements during a release cycle.

A reduction in the cost of errors. Tamper-proof audit logs, built-in compliance features, and video-based reporting and dashboards identify bugs easily and provide the necessary documentation you need to get the error fixed before an update or system change is live.

Learn how major Dutch bank sped up their testing eight fold, with codeless automation testing.

To learn more about testing at speed in a banking or financial institution, you can read our whitepaper on how no-code test automation drives agile transformation in the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) sectors.