The financial services industry is quickly moving toward an all-digital future with the rise of mobile banking and data connectivity. In 2021, fintech startups raised more than $120 billion. Companies like Stripe and Plaid have made it easier for developers to tap into banking data to deliver unique customer experiences. Let's look at some of the most common testing requirements and challenges in financial services and how you can develop an effective testing strategy for your organization.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is a way of conducting finance-related activity using blockchain technology. It is a fast-emerging segment where many decentralized apps can be integrated and can allow anyone to conduct financial transactions by making use of public blockchain technology. It is increasingly being seen as a viable alternative to the conventional intermediary-focused approach of centralized systems.

Every financial professional understands that the numbers matter a great deal when it comes to reporting financial results. Accuracy, consistency, and timeliness are important. Those same professionals also know that there’s substantive meaning behind those numbers and that it’s important to tell the stories that lend additional depth and context to the raw financial statements.

In many organizations, transfer pricing adjustments are like a lot of other last-minute activities. They seem to be ignored throughout most of the annual cycle. Then, they suddenly take on a great importance at year-end. That leaves the tax team scrambling to address an entire year’s worth of transactions. It also leads to interdepartmental friction in many cases. If transfer pricing is changed retroactively for the entire year, that can have far-reaching implications.

Banks and financial institutions are highly regulated, where any noncompliance with strict rules and regulations can lead to heavy fines. Add to that skyrocketing customer expectations and it’s easy to see why finance is so competitive. Success in this environment requires accountability, coupled with process efficiency and the ability to optimize for continuous improvement. How do you get there? Process mining in finance is quickly becoming integral to success.

Discover how mobile teams building finance apps rate themselves across the five key Mobile DevOps metrics.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quite powerful and is constantly evolving and currently knows no bounds. It is focused on outperforming its limits using the power of Machine Learning (ML). AI is empowering computers to do things that human beings are unable to do efficiently and effectively and machine learning is aiding the computers to do so by breaking the rules of traditional programming.

Fintech is the perfect example of how emerging, disruptive technologies are rocking a traditional industry: the banking sector. Fintech, a portmanteau of financial technology, is its own industry, changing the banking world and forcing it to evolve. Most financial institutions are now using some kind of fintech, from simple banking apps to entire platforms aimed at promoting open banking.

Finance teams are taking on new challenges and responsibilities in light of the uncertain economic climate that surfaced in the wake of the global pandemic, supply chain disruptions, price inflation, and the wholesale workforce exodus known as the “Great Resignation.” Now more than ever, organizational leadership is looking to the Office of the CFO to be a strategic partner in building an overall business strategy.