(E.FinancialCareers) Banks have been busy building teams of quantum computing researchers.
Goldman Sachs has recently assembled a “full team dedicated to quantum computing,” William Zeng, head of quantum research at Goldman Sachs told a virtual audience recently.
Subsequently, Marco Pistoia, managing director and head of the FLARE (Future Lab for Applied Research and Engineering) at JPMorgan, said quantum computing is what FLARE is “particularly interested in.”
Zheng said Goldman sees three broad use cases for quantum computing in finance: simulation (eg. for the statistical simulations of stochastic processes used in derivative pricing); optimization (eg. portfolio optimization in the context of regulatory and tax constraints); and machine learning, which remains a “nascent” field in finance.
Pistoia said JPMorgan is also looking at using quantum computers for portfolio optimization. JPM is interested, too, in the potential for quantum computers to break existing methods of cryptography, thereby compromising the security of the entire financial system. This could happen in as little as a decade, said Pistoia – “it depends upon the hardware.”