Excellent financial rating

In addressing their regulatory obligations such as those raised by the Basel II Capital Accord, many financial services groups have embarked on the actions necessary to control their operational risk, by minimising the likelihood of failure of their people, internal processes and systems.

Our own financial sector customers have recognised this. More importantly, they have realised the benefits of testing at the source code level. By analysing and testing source code they eliminate errors that would otherwise compound as their software applications are constructed.

Enabling action

In acknowledging the benefits of source code analysis and testing, they have adopted the LDRA tool suite to conduct automated static analysis, dynamic analysis and unit testing of their code.

Our financial sector customers include:

• NatWest
• AIB Group
• LBS West (incl. several subsidiaries)
• Sparkassen
• Den Danske Bank
• ING BBL
• Hamburgische Landesbank
• Gemeentekrediet

These financial groups have used the LDRA tool suite for thirty years to facilitate improvements in the efficiency of their service to customers. By ensuring that their critical IT systems function without error, they have used the LDRA tool suite to:

• Test native hosted multiple language applications
• Provide a benchmark for verifying contractor and internally-developed software before they ‘go live’
• Test the accuracy of date critical systems
• Analyse back office software applications
• Develop new applications in which source code testing plays an integral part

Realising tangible benefits

In so doing, they look for tangible benefits. Those they have realised include a 25% reduction in application development time, a reduction in maintenance costs by 40% and a fall in testing time by 75%. Other significant benefits include an increase in the quality of testing, the quality of coding and the ability to ensure that third party software meets stringent internal standards before implementation.

Testimony to the value of the LDRA tool suite is a comment from Heinz Langer at LBS West, market leader in the Nordrhein-Westfalen region of the German housing finance market.

He says: “With two million customers all waiting for documents at the same critical time, it is crucial LBS operates at maximum effectiveness. Having tested the particular computer systems using LDRA Testbed we can be confident that when we require critical systems to work at their maximum potential, they will.”

He adds: “We originally estimated the ROI from saved maintenance effort on our new back office system would cover our investment in the tool within two years. But after using the tools for acceptance testing we found that the savings gained from reduced testing time were already greater than the tool cost.”

Heinz Langer of LBS West