We have an important role to play in creating a more sustainable and inclusive future.
Our report provides an update on how we are Helping Britain Prosper in a way that delivers long-term profit and returns.
We put you first, so you can put our customers first.
Our report provides an update on how we are Helping Britain Prosper in a way that delivers long-term profit and returns.
Disclosures relating to our strategic, financial, operational, environmental and social performance.
See all the key dates in the financial year.
Higher, more sustainable returns as we continue to Help Britain Prosper.
With hubs across the UK, there's a place for you.
We're searching for the best talent to join us in Leeds.
Join us as we explore new ideas and technologies to reshape the world of finance.
Working with us gives you access to some of the UK’s household brands.
We have an important role to play in creating a more sustainable and inclusive future.
Our report provides an update on how we are Helping Britain Prosper in a way that delivers long-term profit and returns.
We put you first, so you can put our customers first.
Our report provides an update on how we are Helping Britain Prosper in a way that delivers long-term profit and returns.
Disclosures relating to our strategic, financial, operational, environmental and social performance.
See all the key dates in the financial year.
Higher, more sustainable returns as we continue to Help Britain Prosper.
With hubs across the UK, there's a place for you.
We're searching for the best talent to join us in Leeds.
Join us as we explore new ideas and technologies to reshape the world of finance.
Working with us gives you access to some of the UK’s household brands.
A collaborative experiment with IBM
Quantum computing is rapidly emerging as one of the most transformative technologies of the next decade, offering the potential to tackle computational challenges beyond the reach of classical systems.
At Lloyds Banking Group, we are committed to understanding how such breakthrough technologies could shape the future of financial services and enhance the outcomes we deliver for our customers. One of our most significant steps on this journey has been a nine-month quantum computing experiment carried out in collaboration with IBM, exploring how quantum algorithms might support economic crime prevention.
This article summarises the experiment, the collaborative approach behind it, and what the findings mean for our long-term innovation agenda.
Financial services organisations face increasingly complex computational challenges, from fraud detection to optimisation and simulation tasks. While artificial intelligence and classical machine learning continue to be essential tools, quantum computing may offer advantages in situations where traditional architectures reach their limits.
Early research by our Emerging Technology & Innovation (ET&I) team highlighted several areas where quantum computing could outperform classical methods, including graph based anomaly detection; an important capability in understanding fraudulent or criminal behaviours. This formed the foundation for choosing economic crime prevention as the first domain for experimentation.
The collaboration with IBM brought together subject matter experts from across both organisations. The project unfolded across a discovery phase – mapping quantum opportunity areas across the Group – and an experimentation phase focused on one specific challenge in economic crime prevention: detecting mule activity using graph analytics.
This involved combining anonymised real transactional data with quantum algorithms executed on IBM’s cloud based quantum computers. The goal was not to deliver production ready solutions, but to understand which quantum techniques show genuine long-term promise.
We explored multiple quantum algorithmic approaches, including techniques that had not been widely tested in this context. While results should not be overstated, several approaches showed promising early behaviour, and the experiment is considered among the largest of its kind conducted on real quantum hardware.
Economic crime prevention, particularly the detection of mule accounts, requires analysing highly complex networks of financial transactions. These can be represented as graphs of customers, accounts, and payments, where suspicious activity often hides in subtle network structures.
Traditional computers struggle with certain classes of graph problems because the number of possible solutions grows exponentially with problem size, making them among the most challenging problems to solve using classical computation. Quantum computing holds the potential to mitigate these limitations by exploring vast solution spaces more efficiently than classical hardware.
Our experiment did not aim to explore how to replace machine learning models currently used in fraud and crime prevention. Instead, it explored whether quantum enhanced techniques could one day generate more sophisticated graph-based features to support future models; features that might be too complex or expensive to compute classically.
The experiment successfully trialled quantum optimisation algorithms not previously tested on real hardware in this domain. These techniques demonstrated encouraging behaviour as problem sizes scaled.
The experiment confirmed that quantum computing is unlikely to replace AI or classical methods. Instead, it could become an additional computational tool, complementing machine learning by generating new types of features or enabling deeper network analysis.
Alongside the experiment, ET&I developed a broader roadmap identifying several potential quantum use cases across the Group. Some, such as optimisation tasks, may reach advantage sooner due to the maturity of relevant algorithms and hardware.
One of the most valuable outcomes of the experiment has been capability building. The experiment created practical learning opportunities for our colleagues, through hands on code reviews, detailed walkthroughs of algorithmic decisions, and the establishment of our Quantum Ambassador Programme, a group responsible for deepening expertise, exploring emerging use cases, and helping to grow a thriving internal quantum community, on code reviews, detailed walkthroughs of algorithmic decisions, and the establishment of our Quantum Ambassador Programme.
This community is strengthening our future ready culture, supporting the Group’s ambition to think more like a fintech: agile, exploratory and technology led.
The quantum computing experiment forms part of a broader effort to ensure Lloyds Banking Group remains at the forefront of technological change. It sits alongside our work in AI, agentic systems, and blockchain. Quantum may be further from maturity than some technologies, but the opportunity it presents is significant.
How Lloyds Banking Group is exploring quantum computing with IBM to tackle complex challenges in economic crime prevention and build future‑ready capabilities.
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