Quantum Computing for Supply Chain Finance

Applying quantum computing to real world applications to assess the potential efficacy is a daunting task for non-quantum specialists. This paper shows an implementation of two quantum optimization algorithms applied to portfolios of trade finance portfolios and compares the selections to those chosen by experienced underwriters and a classical optimizer. The method used is to map the financial risk and returns for a trade finance portfolio to an optimization function of a quantum algorithm developed in a Qiskit tutorial. The results show that whilst there is no advantage seen by using the quantum algorithms, the performance of the quantum algorithms has no statistically significant degradation. Therefore, it is promising that in the future, with expected improvements in quantum hardware, the theoretically superior processing speeds, and data volumes that quantum offers, will also be applicable to trade finance.