Quantum Hardware Could Transform Financial Services
(Funds-Europe) High-performance computing powered by quantum hardware could transform financial services firms’ approach to artificial intelligence and optimization.
Standard Chartered has been looking closely at the advances that this discipline may bring to financial services; two years ago, it began a joint project with the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), a Maryland-based non-profit research corporation that organises quantum computing collaboration with external partners through the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL). This project utilized quantum computing hardware based at the NASA Ames Research Centre in California. Standard Chartered employed a quantum annealing computer for its first quantum computing project because, at the time of the project launch.
Using quantum algorithms driven by a digital “gate model” IBM Q 5-qubit computer, IBM Research has also been working on approaches to financial risk analysis that provide a significant speed-up on classical computing algorithms. Monte Carlo simulations are widely used in financial services for computing value at risk (VaR) and conditional value at risk (cVaR) metrics for example, and IBM identifies opportunities for significant advances in computational speed for these simulations using quantum computing.