The Quality Jam QA Symphony conferencesaw an impressive line-up of speakers talking on a variety of topics, aimed at giving delegates an opportunity to learn new skills and access expert industry knowledge.

A project that tested and took live a new investment bot for South African banking conglomerate Nedgroup Investments was presented by software development and testing company DVT, under the banner of its UK counterpart Inspired Testing.

The presentation, called ‘Using BDD to Test a Robotic Process Automation Solution’, looked at the goals and challenges of the project, discussed project testing implementation using BDD and Agile, and included a brief project overview.

DVT was an integral part of this project team, which won The Banker Magazine Technology Projects of the Year 2018 award in the category of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Nedgroup Investments.

The project was also a finalist in the 2018 Gartner Eye on Innovation award, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).

The 45-minute information-sharing session at Quality Jam 2018, given by the inimitable Mario Matthee, showed how Nedgroup Investments was ultimately able to provide its customers with an automated savings platform through its ‘Extraordinary Life’ project. Extraordinary Life is an end-to-end digital journey that integrates artificial intelligence, chatbot, advanced investment algorithms, web and API development.

The platform utilises a chatbot – an electronic virtual assistant or EVA – designed to help Nedgroup Investments’ clients achieve their financial goals through four investment choices – retirement, investing, personal goals and education. It is aimed at making investing easy and digital, while incorporating legislated financial governance. Sign-up is fast and paperless, and there are no advice fees, no admin fees and low investment management fees. There are also no forms to complete or long questionnaires. The client interacts with EVA through a series of questions and conversations, and a financial advisor is available should the user require help. Digital onboarding reduces the cost of starting investing by 90%.