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Darren, you raise some very valid points, especially with regard to legacy systems and the pressure to keep up with new technology adoption.

Banks are unable to invest in new technology partly due to budget constraints, the high cost of maintenance, but also due to the fact that no single person or even group of people ever fully understands the end to end structure. 

You are right that it is time banks got back control of their payment systems in order to adopt new technologies and meet customer requirements.  This would minimize the need for unique customisations and in turn help reduce the high maintenance costs freeing up budget for new projects.

The best way for banks to get back control is to simulate or model the existing system through testing.  They will then be able to understand the functionality offered today, and therefore what new functionality is required.  Once they understand the current system they will be able to assess new systems and functionality to see how it will interact with and impact current services.

This is the first step in adopting an end to end testing strategy that will give the bank the confidence to move with the times and not get stuck in a rut.

As a final thought it is important to ensure that any testing being done accurately reflects the real world.  Using test data analytics you can correlate your test logs against production logs to ensure that the percentage of each type of test run is relevant to your environment

Very interesting article.  A Stress testing framework needs to encompass the entire banking operation.  Today too much is still done in silos with little or no consideration to other areas.  The sooner that banks knock down the walls between the silos and consolidate the easier it will be to truly prepare for the ‘perfect storm’.

Consolidation of banking infrastructure will allow a single stress testing framework to be applied.  This framework must then allow for multiple end to end stress tests in order to accurately measure the effect of different scenarios.