Press Release
London, 14th May 2020 – As the COVID-19 pandemic immobilised the testing operations for many banks, one RedCompass Labs customer continued without missing a beat
While COVID-19 crippled testing for some banks, one RedCompass Labs client in London benefited from the implementation of a revolutionary data-driven payments testing solution, enabling them to slash systems testing costs by 20% and continue testing at pace while working remotely. This initiative is part of an ongoing programme by Mizuho Bank to leverage innovative technology that reduces cost, builds resilience and enables right-sized, blended onsite, near-shore and off-shore teams to deliver transformation across its global operations.
The Quality Assurance-as-a-Service (QAaaS) solution, developed by RedCompass Labs, a specialist banking consultancy, combines QA expertise and big-data analytics tools to amplify the bank’s testing capacity dramatically. By cleansing and comparing production file data, it drastically cuts the time and number of people required for testing, increasing coverage, and significantly improving quality.
“Traditional manual and automated testing solutions are slow, prone to human error, resource-intensive and costly to maintain,” said Ed Pask, Senior Partner at RedCompass Labs. “Leveraging our 18-years of specialised payments testing experience and our cutting-edge data analytics expertise, we have reimagined Quality Assurance to address all of these shortcomings”.
Bucking industry trends caused by current COVID-19 restrictions, last month Mizuho and RedCompass Labs successfully accelerated cost-saving and automated deployment tooling. Under the UK Government’s restrictions of working from home, the consultancy was able to remotely deploy an upgraded version of the data analysis tool, via RedCompass Labs’ team in Poland. This upgrade enabled the bank’s team and RedCompass Labs consultants to begin remote testing with offsite resources, without any operational impact.
“In the current economic environment where the COVID-19 pandemic is hurting the economy and shutting down offshore traditional testing”, said Tom Hewson, RedCompass Labs Senior Partner, “banks must start to build resilience, reduce cost and increase quality to prevail. RedCompass Labs’ QA as a Service, powered by data analytics, uses anonymised production data to do just that.”
Mizuho integrated the ground-breaking testing solution into their payments test environment in 2019 and has drastically increased its pace of testing since then. Using vast volumes of anonymised production data to validate system changes in near real-time, Mizuho now detects defects (including those impossible to predict edge cases) early in its development cycle. These defects never reach production, where they could negatively impact customers and the bank’s reputation.
“At Mizuho, we act with our clients in mind. We strive to offer value-added payment services that are reliable and resilient. It is key for us that we protect our customers from incidents and defects in the production environment”, explained Christophe Camboly, Managing Director, Head of Europe IT & Operations Department at Mizuho Bank.
Identifying defects as early as possible saves costly rework later in the development cycle, reducing the overall cost and complexity of system development and production changes. Mizuho was able to realise a 20% saving in quality assurance costs on their first project using this technology. The upgraded version implemented last month promises further cost efficiency for future payments projects across Mizuho’s European operations.
“Working in partnership with RedCompass Labs”, continued Camboly, “we have been able to cut costs and drive efficiency across the European payment platform. Having this technology in place is timely as we are now well prepared to efficiently tackle the challenges of the transition to ISO 20022, starting with the Target2 migration in 2021”.
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Note to Editors
About Mizuho:
Mizuho Bank, Ltd. is an integral part of the Japan-based Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. Mizuho Financial Group is one of the largest financial institutions in the world, offering comprehensive financial and strategic services including private banking and venture capital through its subsidiaries. The group has over 900 offices and 60,000 employees worldwide in nearly 40 countries throughout the Americas, EMEA, and Asia. As of March 31, 2019, its total assets were $1.8 trillion. www.mizuho-emea.com
About RedCompass Labs:
RedCompass Labs helps financial institutions deliver profitable, secure, end-to-end payment and financial crime services and solutions. The team provides advanced AI data-led payments and financial crime testing technology, data analytics services together with delivery-focused consulting, managed services, and world-class workshops on a vast array of subjects, including the Future of Payments and ISO 20022.
RedCompass Labs is committed to opening the doors of finance to all with our payment expertise and data-led technologies, and protecting those who enter, especially by disrupting financial crime that affects the most vulnerable. To this end, we have invested in R&D, data science and created D1R4Payments, a game-changing way to accelerate, lower cost and increase coverage by using production data for payment platforms. We have also developed the RedCompass Labs RedFlag Accelerator, the global point of reference of modern slavery, human trafficking, and Child Sexual Exploitation red flags for the financial industry. The RedFlag Accelerator won the PayTech For Good Award and Themis Anti Financial Crime Innovation Award.
Today, RedCompass Labs supports its clients from its four offices in London, Singapore, Tokyo, and Warsaw. More on RedCompass Labs at www.redcompasslabs.com
Contact:
Chiara Galleani, Marketing Manager: chiara.galleani@redcompass.com