The financial services industry is constantly changing which is why most IT companies incorporate complex design while developing financial applications. This is done to ensure that the application is able to perform in a secure manner.  The applications have to deal with complex transactions in real time. An error in a financial application can never be tolerated. Therefore the team has to follow the software testing and quality assurance guidelines strictly. Thus, the developers and tester of financial applications should have sound domain knowledge. An error in financial application can result in many problems such as leakage of takings due to poor performance of the application, unavailability of the system when a customer is trying to buy or sell etc. There is a great demand for software testing in Ireland for financial applications. In order to get such kind of a testing job the candidate must have good understanding of finance.

Different financial applications have different software testing and QA requirements.  Whether the application is related to trading, online/ mobile banking, accounting or processing insurance claims, it cannot be tested till the time the tester has gained knowledge in this domain because a financial application is not just tested for knowledge but also for underlying logic. Once the tester is fully equipped with knowledge s/he can proceed with the testing activities. A test plan must be created stating how various testing jobs such as functional, user acceptance, product, performance and security testing must be carried out. Depending on the complexity of the application there may be a need to consider specialized testing services such as Data Warehouse testing, compliance testing, regulatory testing etc.

A good testing team would incorporate well defined well organized and well documented software testing and QA procedures for financial institutions in order to create reliable and safe financial applications. The testing operations must be streamlined and standardized in order to carry out all activities in an organized manner.

Financial applications can be vast and complex therefore the testing companies or testing teams of various IT companies must use a combination of automation and manual testing in order to cover all aspects of the application while testing. The testers should have strong technical skills. White box testing is essential for testing financial applications. The tester will have to test the code and check if the logic is correctly implemented and all the coding standards are well implemented.

Testing techniques followed for testing financial applications can be little different from the general software testing techniques. This is because financial applications can be multi tier in nature and can be accessed by several people at the same time. The business work flow can be complex in nature and it may require real time batch processing. The transactions of financial applications must be secure.

The test cases made for testing financial applications must cover all the work flows and business logic that are implied in the application. Test cases must consider the functional and security aspect. The tester should also check for concurrency, user experience and data integrity. Many software recruitment agencies in Ireland have openings related to QA and testing jobs  related to financial applications.