Performance Testing and Engineering for BFSI
or estimate your downtime cost
Trusted by technology leaders at Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank and HDFC Life
Trusted By
What is performance testing and engineering?
Performance testing measures how an application behaves under expected and extreme load: response time, throughput, error rate and resource use. Performance engineering goes further. It diagnoses why the system slows or fails, fixes the root cause in code, database, middleware or infrastructure, and designs performance in from the start. In BFSI, the goal is simple: every critical journey, such as login, fund transfer, UPI payment, policy issuance or trade execution, must hold at peak.
Performance testing vs performance engineering
| Performance testing | Performance engineering | |
|---|---|---|
| Core question | Does the system meet its targets under load? | Why doesn’t it, and how do we make it? |
| Output | Test reports, response times, breaking points | Root causes fixed, tuned systems, capacity headroom |
| When | Before releases, migrations and peak events | Across the lifecycle, from design to production |
| Avekshaa does | Both | Both, and stays until the fix is proven by a re-test |
Types of performance testing we run
| Test type | What it proves | BFSI example |
|---|---|---|
| Load testing | The system meets targets at expected peak volume | Salary-day logins and fund transfers |
| Stress testing | Where and how the system breaks, and that it recovers cleanly | Payment switch beyond forecast volume |
| Spike testing | It survives sudden surges | Market open, IPO days, flash sales on card offers |
| Soak / endurance testing | No memory leaks or degradation over hours or days | End-of-day and month-end batch windows |
| Scalability testing | Adding capacity actually adds throughput | Opening APIs or middleware to partners (3× load) |
| Failover and resilience testing | Services stay within tolerance when a component fails | “Severe but plausible” scenarios for UK operational resilience |
Why is performance testing alone not enough?
Most test reports tell you that a system is slow. They rarely tell you why, so the issue moves into production. We take performance testing to the next level of maturity. We report performance, availability and scalability (P-A-S) issues, run deep root-cause analysis to find the precise cause, and help fix it.
- Performance testing: realistic workloads modelled on production behaviour and peak events.
- Deep root-cause analysis: diagnosis across application code, database, middleware, network and infrastructure, drawing on patterns from 5,000+ resolved production problems.
- Solutions to fix issues: tuning and design fixes, re-tested until the targets are met and the release can go live with confidence.
Who is this performance testing service for?
It is for regulated financial institutions whose revenue and reputation depend on digital channels. In India, these are banks, NBFCs, insurers, payment aggregators and stockbrokers. In the UK, they are banks, building societies, insurers and payments firms.
- CIO / CTO: wants confidence that a launch, migration or peak day will not become an outage.
- Head of QA / Testing: wants realistic workloads, credible results and fewer defects escaping to production.
- VP / Head of Engineering: wants bottlenecks found and fixed before release, not just reported.
- Head of Digital Banking: wants fast, reliable mobile and internet banking journeys at peak.
What does the service include?
- Non-functional requirements and test strategy: journey-level response-time, throughput and error-rate targets agreed with business and IT.
- Workload modelling: realistic user and transaction mixes built from production data, with peaks such as salary days, festive sales, month-end and market open.
- Scripting and execution: load, stress, spike, soak, scalability and failover tests across web, mobile, API, middleware, core banking and batch.
- Deep root-cause analysis: full-stack diagnosis of every bottleneck.
- Tuning and fixes: code, query, configuration and infrastructure optimisation, re-tested until proven.
- Shift-left and CI/CD: automated performance checks in your pipeline so regressions are caught early.
- Performance CoE and managed testing: a standing performance testing and engineering CoE for programmes that release continuously.
How does a performance testing engagement work?
- Discover: map critical journeys, systems and dependencies, and agree non-functional targets and go-live criteria.
- Model: build the workload model and test data from production patterns and expected growth.
- Test: run load, stress, spike, soak and failover tests in a production-like environment.
- Diagnose and fix: find the root cause of every bottleneck and implement or guide the fixes.
- Re-test and certify: prove the targets are met and hand over a go-live readiness report with capacity headroom.
We start with the release, migration or peak event that worries you most.
When should a financial institution performance test?
| Trigger | Typical risk | What testing proves |
|---|---|---|
| Core banking or platform migration (e.g. Finacle, Temenos) | Cut-over failures, batch overruns, slow branches and channels | The new platform handles day-one volumes with zero-downtime go-live |
| New digital or mobile banking launch | Slow logins, timeouts at launch-day traffic | Journeys meet response-time targets at forecast peak |
| Festive, salary-day, tax-deadline or IPO peaks | Surges far above normal volume | Headroom for the peak, with known breaking points |
| UPI, IMPS or card volume growth | Failed or pending transactions | Payment paths scale with volume without failures |
| Cloud migration or re-platforming | Hidden latency, cost overruns | Equal or better performance at an acceptable cost |
| Opening APIs or middleware to partners | Multiplied load from channel partners | Validated concurrency for 2–5× growth |
| Operational resilience scenario tests (UK) | Breaching impact tolerances | Important business services stay within tolerance under severe but plausible stress |
Related reading: keeping UPI systems available at peak and application migration assurance.
How does performance testing support RBI, FCA/PRA and DORA expectations?
Regulators in both markets expect firms to prove that critical services can handle stress and recover, not just to assert it. Performance and resilience testing produces that evidence. It does not replace your compliance programme.
| Regime | What it expects (in brief) | How performance testing helps |
|---|---|---|
| RBI Master Direction on IT Governance, Risk, Controls and Assurance Practices (India, effective April 2024) | Capacity management for critical systems and controlled, tested change | Capacity and scalability evidence before major changes, migrations and peak events |
| FCA PS21/3 and PRA SS1/21 operational resilience (UK, in force since 31 March 2025) | Scenario testing that important business services stay within impact tolerances under severe but plausible disruption | Load, stress and failover tests mapped to important business services and their tolerances |
| DORA (EU operations of UK and Indian groups) | A digital operational resilience testing programme, including performance testing | Repeatable, documented performance and resilience test cycles |
Read more: does performance testing keep you within FCA/PRA impact tolerances? This section is general information, not legal or regulatory advice.
Results: 3× load validated for a leading private-sector bank
Avekshaa’s Performance Testing and Engineering Solution Validates Platform to 3X Load, Ensuring Future-Ready Performance for a Leading Private Sector Bank.
A large Private Sector Bank was about to open their middleware platform to Channel Partners, a move expected to generate three times the current load within a year. Ensuring that their platform could handle this explosive growth was crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction and market competitiveness.
Avekshaa Technologies stepped in with its robust Performance Testing and Engineering solution, ensuring that our client’s platform was not just prepared for this surge but thrived under the increased load.
- Confident and satisfied channel partners
- Validation of platform concurrency for 3X load
- Page load times reduced by 55%
- Transaction throughput increased by 90%
- Projected revenue growth of 30%
More BFSI results: 200% performance improvement and full compliance in a bank’s RTGS batch · 500% payment-gateway scalability for a 5× volume increase · single-day cut-over across 461 branches and 851 ATMs
“Avekshaa Technologies has closely and proactively worked with our team and other partners in our complex big bang core banking migration exercise and helped us in our objective to go-live with zero-defect and zero-downtime in short window of less than 48 hours.”
Mr. Rajiv Sabharwal, Former ED & Board member, ICICI Bank
Have a release, migration or peak event coming up?
Book a 30-minute consultation. A senior performance engineer will review your upcoming release, migration or peak event and outline a test-and-fix plan.
Our clients simply love our work
Reliance Industries’ technology leaders talk about the importance of proactive performance engineering and the role Avekshaa played in successful performance engineering of one of the largest Digital transformation programs in the world involving 100 million+ users with 10-20 million concurrency.
Avekshaa brings in best in class expertise, domain experience, rich case studies and above all highly professional processes and methodologies which deliver truly world class results. Their solutions in the Performance engineering and optimization space – like improving performance, availability and scalability of business-critical IT systems are proactive and holistic with a clear long term in the perspective.
Avekshaa constantly strives to go the extra mile to exceed the expectations hence positioning them amongst the leaders. We are extremely happy with our association with them and look forward for an ongoing partnership with Avekshaa to deliver best in class solutions to our clients. Wish Avekshaa the very best always.
Mr. Rajeswar, Member of Board-Advisory Genisys Group, Evangelist Technology, Strategy and Business Excellence
Why partner with Avekshaa for performance testing and engineering?
- PERFORMANCE TESTING
- DEEP RCA
- SOLUTIONS TO FIX ISSUES
Deep Root Cause Analysis
Instead of relying on the traditional NO-RCA or superficial, tool-based RCA methods, we leverage our expertise and the P-A-S-S™ Assurance platform to unearth deep-level performance, availability, and scalability (P-A-S) bottlenecks throughout the technology stack.
Providing Solutions to Identified P-A-S Issues
For businesses to operate smoothly and to ensure rapid time-to-market, it's crucial that issues are resolved promptly. We offer solutions for the identified performance, availability, and scalability (P-A-S) bottlenecks and collaborate with the customer and their vendors for swift resolution.
95%+ Acceptance Rate of Identified Issues and 100% Success Rate
We have an impressive history of delivering Performance Testing and Engineering programs with a 100% success rate. Furthermore, over 95% of the performance, availability, and scalability (P-A-S) issues we identify are acknowledged and accepted by vendors/customers.
Comprehensive Solution for Varied Systems
Our solution spans all IT systems, encompassing various technology stack layers and even commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products.
Realistic Workload Simulations
Our skilled team tailors workload models and realistic test beds, executing a range of tests, from stress to failover, to validate Performance, Availability, and Scalability.
Complete Performance Assurance
Avekshaa's approach guarantees complete performance assurance, executing various tests and analyses to ensure your applications meet the highest performance, availability, and scalability standards.
Which performance testing tools do you use?
We are tool-agnostic. We use open-source tools such as JMeter, k6 and Gatling, and we work with the commercial tools you already license, so results fit your existing pipelines and teams. Diagnosis uses APM and observability tooling across the stack. See our comparison of JMeter vs k6 vs Gatling for banking applications.
In-house performance testing team or a specialist partner?
| In-house only | With Avekshaa | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to start | Hiring and tooling first | Starts with your most urgent release or peak |
| Depth of diagnosis | Often stops at the test report | Deep root-cause analysis and fixes, re-tested |
| BFSI experience | Limited to your own systems | Core banking, payments, CRM and digital channels across leading banks and insurers |
| Best fit | Stable systems, low change volume | Migrations, major launches, peak events, regulatory scenario tests, or a hybrid CoE alongside your team |
More on this: in-house team vs managed performance engineering partner.
How should a bank choose a performance testing partner?
- Proven BFSI outcomes with named metrics: throughput, load validated, zero-downtime go-lives.
- Diagnosis and fixing capability, not only test execution and reporting.
- Experience with your platforms: core banking, payment switches, middleware and mobile.
- Realistic workload modelling from production data, not synthetic guesses.
- Regulatory fluency: RBI expectations in India, FCA/PRA scenario testing in the UK.
- Information security: ISO/IEC 27001 certification and controlled handling of test data.
Frequently asked questions
What is performance testing in banking?
Performance testing in banking checks that applications such as internet and mobile banking, payments, core banking and CRM meet response-time, throughput and stability targets under expected and peak load. It covers load, stress, spike, soak and failover tests that reflect real customer behaviour.
What is the difference between performance testing and performance engineering?
Performance testing measures whether a system meets its targets under load. Performance engineering diagnoses why it does not, fixes the root cause and designs performance into the system. Avekshaa does both and re-tests until the fix is proven.
What types of performance testing do banks need?
Most banks need load testing for expected peaks, stress testing to find breaking points, spike testing for sudden surges, soak testing for long batch windows, scalability testing for growth, and failover testing for operational resilience.
How do you load test a core banking system?
Start from production transaction mixes and peak volumes, model branch, channel, API and batch workloads together, use a production-like environment and masked data, then test the end-of-day and month-end windows as well as online peaks. Every bottleneck found is diagnosed to root cause.
How do you performance test UPI and payment systems?
Model peak transaction rates and the mix of success, failure and pending flows. Test the full payment path, including the switch, databases and integrations, under load and spikes, and confirm that success rates and response times hold as volume grows.
When should we performance test before a core banking migration?
Early and repeatedly: during design to size infrastructure, before cut-over rehearsals to validate day-one volumes, and after cut-over to confirm production behaviour. Avekshaa supported a big-bang core banking migration that went live with zero defects and zero downtime in under 48 hours.
Does performance testing help with FCA/PRA operational resilience?
Yes. Load, stress and failover tests mapped to important business services show whether they stay within impact tolerances under severe but plausible scenarios, which is the evidence UK firms need for their self-assessments.
Should we build an in-house performance testing team or use a partner?
An in-house team suits stable systems with low change volume. A specialist partner, or a hybrid CoE, suits migrations, major launches, peak events and regulatory tests, where deep diagnosis and BFSI experience matter most.
Which tools do you use for performance testing?
We are tool-agnostic. We use open-source tools such as JMeter, k6 and Gatling and work with the commercial tools you already license, combined with APM and observability tooling for diagnosis.
How is a performance testing engagement priced?
Engagements are usually scoped per release, migration or peak event, or as an ongoing managed service or CoE for continuous programmes. Book a consultation for a scoped estimate.
Related: Performance testing for banking applications · Performance testing & engineering CoE · Application performance management · Production performance troubleshooting · Application migration assurance · Site reliability engineering
Technologies We Have Worked On
Related Solutions
Revamp your software testing approach for the digital age, seamlessly integrating testing in the development lifecycle with Avekshaa’s forward-looking Quality Assurance and Engineering solutions.
Assists businesses achieve flawless applications through cost-effective and expedited testing cycles with comprehensive coverage and minimal human intervention, providing standardized and consistent automation approaches that ensure high reusability, ease of maintenance, and lower upfront costs.
Avekshaa’s Performance Testing and Engineering Center of Excellence empowers enterprises to achieve higher Performance, Availability and Scalability maturity levels, facilitating faster delivery cycles and enhanced confidence in the delivery process while continuously improving performance, availability & scalability standards for critical applications and change requests.
Have a release, migration or peak event coming up?
Book a 30-minute consultation. A senior performance engineer will review your upcoming release, migration or peak event and outline a test-and-fix plan.