HSBC will work with IBM as it seeks to explore applications for quantum computing in financial services.
As part of the three-year agreement, HSBC will join the IBM Quantum Accelerator program, giving it access to IBM’s premium plan of quantum computing systems, including its recently announced 127-qubit processor, Eagle. The bank will also use IBM to help validate potential quantum use cases.
Colin Bell, Chief Executive Officer, HSBC Bank and HSBC Europe, explains: “By investing in quantum computing we are innovating for the future, to make banking easier for our customers. This technology has the potential to transform how we run areas of the bank by addressing challenges which classical computers may never be able to solve, alone.”
There are some specific areas of interest to HSBC. The bank says it will explore the use of quantum computing for pricing and portfolio optimisation, to advance its net zero goals, and to mitigate risks, including identifying and addressing fraudulent activity.
HSBC will helps its staff adapt to quantum technology through internal training programmes, as well as actively recruiting quantum computing research scientists, to build a dedicated capability within its innovation team.
More than 175 clients, including Fortune 500 companies, startups, academic institutions and research labs work with IBM Quantum technology as they explore practical applications.
The realm of quantum computing has unsurprisingly attracted a lot of attention.
Earlier this month, the NATO Cyber Security Centre announced it has been experimenting with post-quantum encryption to ensure secure communications flows are protected against attacks that use quantum computing.
In February, Rigetti Computing and Nasdaq teamed up to pursue the development of quantum applications to help solve computational problems in the financial industry.
Late last year, Colorado-based Honeywell Quantum Solutions and Cambridge Quantum paired up to create the Anglo-American entity Quantinuum. Today (29 March), Quantinuum revealed a major update to its quantum natural language processing software development toolkit, called lambeq.
