The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has moved to test quantum computing as a practical tool for detecting financial crime, establishing the Quantum Experimentation Group as the first regulator-led effort of its kind.
Announced in early November 2026, the initiative will convene banks, quantum technology firms and national research laboratories to examine whether quantum machine learning can identify money laundering networks and fraud patterns more effectively than classical systems.
Work is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2027, with organisations invited to register interest by the end of December 2026.
Participants will experiment on a synthetic dataset created by the FCA.
The artificially generated transaction data is designed to mirror realistic behaviours while removing the privacy and access barriers that have slowed earlier testing.
Findings will be shared to guide further industry trials and to help the regulator assess both the technology’s potential advantages and its practical limits, including any implications for future rules.
Jessica Rusu, the FCA’s chief data, information and intelligence officer, framed the effort as essential preparation rather than a finished solution.
She stated that the authority wants firms to explore where quantum methods could deliver meaningful improvement and that early, structured experimentation is necessary to understand the technology’s place in financial services.
By uniting industry practitioners, technology providers and researchers, the group aims to build organisational readiness around shared challenges, beginning with financial crime.
The announcement builds on earlier FCA research into quantum applications across UK financial services and coincides with private-sector experiments already under way.
In April 2026, Lloyds Banking Group concluded a nine-month collaboration with IBM that applied quantum algorithms to graph-based analysis of money-mule activity.
Using anonymised real transaction data on IBM’s 156-qubit cloud systems, the team successfully identified a deliberately embedded mule network.
Ron van Kemenade, Lloyds Banking Group’s chief operating officer, observed that financial crime is growing more complex and network-driven, requiring continuous advances in technology to protect customers.
Although quantum computing remains emerging, he noted that the experiment translated research into practical insights while developing internal expertise.
Jamie Harbour, enterprise architect for emerging technology and innovation at Lloyds, and Adam Milner, the bank’s lead quantum ambassador, explained that mule detection depends on mapping intricate webs of accounts and payments in which suspicious links are easily obscured.
Certain graph problems expand exponentially, straining classical computers; quantum approaches may eventually generate richer features that classical machine learning models can then use.
Scott Crowder, vice president of quantum adoption and business development at IBM, described the partnership as evidence that forward-looking institutions can already conduct meaningful research on real hardware.
HSBC has pursued parallel work. Philip Intallura, the bank’s global head of quantum technologies, has highlighted quantum machine learning’s potential to improve precision in fraud and anti-money-laundering models.
Even modest gains in detection rates, he has argued, could produce substantial real-world impact given the volume of transactions processed by major banks.
HSBC specialists have collaborated with the National Quantum Computing Centre on indicators of illicit activity, consistent with broader UK government investment of £121 million in quantum technology aimed in part at tackling fraud and money laundering.
The FCA’s group is deliberately experimental. It does not guarantee that quantum methods will outperform existing tools, nor does participation imply regulatory endorsement.
Instead, it creates a supervised environment in which firms can test approaches, compare results against classical baselines, and surface barriers to adoption. As quantum hardware and algorithms continue to mature, the initiative offers a structured route for the UK financial sector to evaluate whether the technology can strengthen defences against sophisticated crime while informing the regulatory framework that will govern its eventual use.
