Insurance Software Testing

In the insurance industry, frequent changes in regulations needing business model adaptations impact time to market for new products and services. In addition, legacy insurance applications and their integration with new technologies, risk and cost of non-compliance, customer dissatisfaction, and risk of downtime, present significant challenges.
Insurance Software Testing

XBOSoft’s insurance industry clients include large and small enterprises across the globe. Our strong insurance software testing team with their associated insurance domain knowledge in software testing and technology expertise offers a multitude of software testing services and quality assurance in the insurance industry.

Insurance Software Testing Challenges

Insurance is a broad industry covering health, personal property, liability, automobiles, mortgages, and more. With such a wide range, some companies specialize while others offer comprehensive product offerings. In the last year and a half, XBOSoft has worked together with another software company that mainly focuses on developing software for the insurance industry. During this time, we’ve accumulated expert domain knowledge in software testing and have mastered key points that are important for effective QA and insurance application testing. Some of them include:

1. Role Permissions

These roles may include:

  • End-user who may fill in their pre-qualification information.
  • An insurance agent who submits the insurance application.
  • An insurance company employee who mainly checks and approves (or declines) the application.
  • An administrator who has rights to set up the software.

These roles are totally different and have different permissions. It is critical to ensure that each role has correct rights. Defects in this part of the application may cause a big loss for the insurance company, which is why insurance application testing is key.

2. Information Interfaces

When testing insurance software, we need to verify that information not only can be saved in the front office but also can be saved and transferred through the front, middle, and back-office (and vice versa) databases and operations without any errors. Transferring and moving information via various APIs is always an issue as even standard APIs may be implemented with slight variations.

3.  Changes of Numbers

Insurance is all about money and numbers. A trivial change of a number in a variable may cause a big difference in the final result. Usually, nearly every new release of the insurance software contains some changes in the numbers such as the interest or percentage of the provider fee. Therefore, data verification and checking all calculations is very important. This can be especially sensitive and critical for software dealing with multiple currencies.

4. Understanding Insurance Domain Knowledge

One application may include many insurance types. The requirements and workflow for these insurance types are also different. Even for the same type of insurance, there may be different workflows depending on the age or income of the applicant. Since most software testers are not experts in insurance, understanding these complex rules presents a challenge. You have put yourself in the shoes of an insurance agent as well as the broker to understand all the rules and criteria.

5. Checking Lengthy Documents

This is not technically challenging but requires patience. Most insurance software applications contain large amounts of paper output and usually, these documents have many pages. Information in the application must be checked periodically with paper output. Depending on the frequency that this task needs to be done, automated data verification testing can be used to accomplish this task.

6. Targeting Regression Testing

Because there are so many workflows and many of the pieces and parts of the workflows can touch each other in different user stories, figuring out what to regression test when you have a software update is a never-ending challenge. As such you have to target functional testing and associated regression testing judiciously through a deep understanding of the software, business rules, and how user stories relate to one another. In most cases, test automation will comprise a critical component of the overall QA process.

Testing Insurance Software – XML Data Verification is at the Core

Testing insurance software can be divided into front, middle, and back-office. When we examine the front office, we pay attention to the UI part. The front office is used by insurance agents and insurance company employees. For insurance agents, they use the software to create or help a customer create a file and apply one or more types of insurance. Insurance company employees then communicate with the agents by accepting or rejecting the application.

However, the front office is just a small part of the whole system. There are other components that need to communicate with the front office. XML is one of the predominant data formats used for this communication. Actually, the front office is just a UI part for the end-user, after the user clicks ‘apply’, all the information will be integrated into an XML file and sent to the middle and back office. The middle and back office will use the information in the XML message and execute a task, such as the calculation of the final payment, and then send another XML file back to the front office. In the end, the message is shown in the front office software to the end-user.

To test insurance software, we need to have detailed knowledge of the insurance processing flow, how the system handles the XML data and data verification testing methods. For one of the insurance systems we test, we use a 3-step methodology:

Step 1: The insurance system integrates all information filled in the front office and generates an XML file. For this step, like quality assurance, we validate all XML nodes and values for a range of inputs.

Step 2: The XML message is used by other components or services and then returns a new XML file, which needs testing for COV (correct output values) and negative inputs.

Step 3:  The message in the output XML file is shown in the front office software, similar to Step 1 above. Verify the different node/value between the input and output XML files.

In general, XML communication is a core method used in many insurance software systems. XML is often used as a format to transfer critical data from the front office to the middle and back-office systems. If the data is wrong, the entire system’s integrity and usefulness will decrease significantly. Therefore, when working with our clients in software testing specific to the insurance industry, we pay special attention to testing the correct XML contents and transfer process.

How We Can Help

Software testing and application testing within the insurance domain is like any other domain-specific related quality assurance work. You really need to understand business rules in developing thorough test cases and in prioritizing the test strategy, functional testing, and test automation approach. Otherwise, you add very little value.

We have been working with insurance software vendors to provide quality assurance and testing of their insurance software solutions, supporting them with independent third-party testing and access to quality assurance thought leadership, resulting in faster time to market and improved software quality.

Find out more about XBOSoft’s specialized insurance software testing and insurance application testing services.

What our clients have to say…

“They automated the web application testing by almost 95% within three months.”

- Lead QA, Whil

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“They’re technically skilled and great at software development.”

- Director of PMO, MatrixCare

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“They're very proactive and always follow through on tasks.”

- President, REAL Software Systems

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"XBOSoft is able to see things from a different perspective and ask smart questions."

- CEO, Mobile MedSoft

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"Their work is very good and their attention to detail is excellent."

- Director of Engineering, Sago Mini

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"Our employees are always either requesting to work with
them or requesting to have more of their resources."


- Software Engineer, BlackLine

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"XBOSoft has some of the most detailed and careful
test execution and reporting I’ve ever seen."


- DevOps Director, Bongo

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"They work hard and make the customer happy."

- Agile Coach, AKVA group Software AS

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“A CEO who’ll make an effort to visit you once a year to make sure you are happy with their
services is at the top of my personal list [of recommendations.]”


- Peter Menhart, Senior Lead Software Developer, Mitel

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“The key to any software application is to have the interface offer the flexibility that will drive
fast and accurate results. XBOSoft enables us to achieve these broad-based goals.”


- Project Manager, Adra Match

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“What I have seen so far is that you have done a great job!”

- Project Manager, AdminControl

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“In our early discussions and pilot testing program with XBOSoft, they demonstrated
impressive knowledge and experience in our type of CPM application. ”


- VP of Development, Host Analytics

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"We have appreciated the high quality work your team
has done as well as your leadership"


- Board Member, Rightsline

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“"You've produced a good piece of work! Excellent!" ”

- Chief of Development, QuestBack

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“When our requirements change, they’re willing
to shift and adapt to what we need.”


- Software Developer, Telecommunications Company

What our clients have to say…

“They automated the web application testing by almost 95% within three months.”

- Lead QA, Whil

Whil. Logo

“They’re technically skilled and great at software development.”

- Director of PMO, MatrixCare

MatrixCare Logo

“They're very proactive and always follow through on tasks.”

- President, REAL Software Systems

REAL Software Systems Logo

"XBOSoft is able to see things from a different perspective and ask smart questions."

- CEO, Mobile MedSoft

Mobile Medsoft small

"Their work is very good and their attention to detail is excellent."

- Director of Engineering, Sago Mini

Sago Mini

"Our employees are always either requesting to work with
them or requesting to have more of their resources."


- Software Engineer, BlackLine

XBOSoft BlackLine case study

"XBOSoft has some of the most detailed and careful
test execution and reporting I’ve ever seen."


- DevOps Director, Bongo

Bongo White Logo

"They work hard and make the customer happy."

- Agile Coach, AKVA group Software AS

Akva Logo

“A CEO who’ll make an effort to visit you once a year to make sure you are happy with their
services is at the top of my personal list [of recommendations.]”


- Peter Menhart, Senior Lead Software Developer, Mitel

Akva Logo

“The key to any software application is to have the interface offer the flexibility that will drive
fast and accurate results. XBOSoft enables us to achieve these broad-based goals.”


- Project Manager, Adra Match

Adra Match Logo

“What I have seen so far is that you have done a great job!”

- Project Manager, AdminControl

AdminControl Logo

“In our early discussions and pilot testing program with XBOSoft, they demonstrated
impressive knowledge and experience in our type of CPM application. ”


- VP of Development, Host Analytics

Host Analytics Logo

"We have appreciated the high quality work your team
has done as well as your leadership"


- Board Member, Rightsline

Rightsline Logo

“"You've produced a good piece of work! Excellent!" ”

- Chief of Development, QuestBack

QuestBack Logo

“When our requirements change, they’re willing
to shift and adapt to what we need.”


- Software Developer, Telecommunications Company

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Put our team of experts to work for you!