Leading Credit Union Achieves Successful Merger with Rapid and Robust Integration

Client overview

Established in 1930, the Client is one of the largest credit unions in Illinois with over 150,000 members and more than $2.4 billion in assets. The Client offers a complete array of financial products and services to its members, including checking, savings, credit card, auto- and real-estate loans and a digital banking platform.

“When a merger of two large credit unions of this size takes place, the risks of service disruption and reputational loss are high.”

Crucial testing key to successful merger of two large systems

In Q4 2020, the Client underwent a merger with another large Illinois-based Credit Union, which had its own 50,000+ membership. When a merger of two large credit unions of this size takes place, the risks of service disruption and reputational loss are high because of the exposure of the absorbing credit union’s systems and data in transit.

Mergers are infrequent occurrences for most credit unions, leaving internal resources inexperienced with even common merger tasks. To successfully affect the systems transition, with all new members successfully integrated, without any explosive events, crucial testing activities needed to take place. Absolutely no negative effects to the Client’s live systems, including digital banking services, could be accepted so it was critical to always mitigate the risk without losing impetus.

For this reason, Qualitest was entrusted to manage the merger testing effort, and ensure that all the new members were successfully migrated into the Client’s systems, and able to carry out all their banking transactions without facing issues that could negatively impact their experience.

Docking a large new system safely at light speed

To make sure the newly absorbed members were successfully migrated to the Client’s system, Qualitest needed to put together a comprehensive test plan, complete with a test strategy, objectives, schedule, and resources required to accomplish the job.

The test plan covered key quality assurance and testing related duties such as:

• Test management, planning, and execution
• System integration testing
• UAT test management

The thorough planning and management of these testing activities helped to ensure a smooth delivery of the Client’s online banking website and mobile banking application.

“Absolutely no negative effects to the Client’s live systems, including digital banking services, could be accepted so it was critical to always mitigate the risk without losing impetus.”

Below is a summary of the key solutions Qualitest employed to successfully deliver the project:

• Our team created and executed 471 test cases, utilizing Microsoft Azure DevOps for test case and defect management.
• Validated through the core system to the downstream teams, then validated the Core connectivity to the digital banking system.
• The morning of the merger Go-Live event, Qualitest executed 82 test cases in a 2.5-hour window when the merged online banking site went live.
• Managed UAT testing of business users frequently as updates were made by the developers.

Key benefits

• All 50,000+ new members were successfully integrated into the Client’s system and Qualitest’s team confirmed that the system had zero critical defects that would negatively impact their banking experience.
• The Client received key test insights from a mock test held prior to official merger date.
• The Client received a list of test cases and the Client’s employees were trained on how to execute testing going forward.
• The Client gained a regression test suite which will enable faster and more efficient testing of the systems going forward.