We can expect from the race between Google and IBM a computer that behaves in a different way to anything we have today by the end of the decade. It will be able to work out what is going on by dealing with what we now see as binary (yes/no) as like a coin tossed in the air (it could be either heads or tails). In short Quantum will be able to predict data much more quickly, more accurately and this will mean work carried out in seconds that might today need minutes or hours.
There are plenty of applications that come to mind, I already wait a long long time for answers to questions that I have when trying to find information but that’s just the start of it. Read about the excitement at HSBC who have been testing Quantum for bond trading.
To process large amounts of data super quickly we are going to need something that goes beyond encryption and Quantum looks an answer
Experts are concerned that the arrival of quantum computing would threaten common encryption techniques of sensitive data, including within financial institutions such as banks.
“Quantum computing is a new branch of computation that uses the laws of quantum mechanics to represent and process information in a space that is exponentially more expansive and dynamic than what classical systems can access,”
said Jay Gambetta, vice-president of IBM Quantum, in a statement.
Intallura added:
“We have great confidence we are on the cusp of a new frontier of computing in financial services, rather than something that is far away in the future.”
If you aren’t aware that Quantum is stirring interest, check a list of articles in the last month in the Financial Times.
Implications for the market
There is a lot of disquiet among the commercial pension providers that there will be no application for them from the pension dashboard and that the market has not got the capacity to consolidate small pots into bigger pots.
In my opinion, the system that has taken 10 years to develop and should be available to the public some time between late next year and the end of the decade is already holed beneath the waterline by complaints of vulnerability to scammers. We simply don’t trust the system of encryption that the dashboard and small pots rely on.
Could Quantum Computing be the step change needed to make commercial applications benefit from the pension dashboard? The power of Quantum should be available when MaPS’ dashboard monopoly is coming to an end. Quantum looks only five years away, that’s a “pension admin blink”.