Beyond the Roadmap Slide: How a Global Bank Used Bespoke Research and IDIs to Decide Which Quantum Computing Use Cases Were Worth Funding Today

Quantum computing occupies an unusual position in enterprise technology evaluation, where the gap between vendor-presented potential and genuine near-term value is unusually wide and difficult for a non-specialist organisation to assess. Benchmark results presented by vendors frequently describe performance on problem instances calibrated to favour the quantum approach, a different proposition from performance on the larger, messier problems an institution actually needs solved.

The client’s innovation division had been approached by several quantum vendors over eighteen months, each presenting compelling benchmark results across different use cases. Internal champions had emerged for portfolio optimisation, risk modelling, and fraud detection respectively, each citing vendor evidence that their preferred use case was the most promising. Leadership recognised it lacked the independent technical depth to evaluate these competing claims rigorously.

The risk of funding the wrong use case, or all three without prioritisation, was not merely financial — it was reputational, since a high-profile quantum pilot failing to deliver promised value would make future funding requests considerably harder to secure.

Key Challenges

• No independent technical assessment evaluating quantum readiness against the bank’s own problem scale and data characteristics, rather than vendor-selected benchmarks
• No structured way to compare the competing use case claims advocated internally for portfolio optimisation, risk modelling, and fraud detection
• No direct intelligence from peer institutions running their own quantum pilots about what those pilots had genuinely achieved
• Limited ability to distinguish vendor benchmark results favouring quantum approaches from results that would translate to actual production problem sizes
• Internal champions for each use case, each citing real but partial vendor evidence, creating a funding debate without an objective resolution
• Executive committee expectation that any funding request be supported by independent technical assessment rather than vendor benchmark claims alone

Enterprise quantum computing evaluation is particularly vulnerable to the gap between benchmark performance and production relevance. Independent assessment against an organisation’s own problem characteristics, combined with peer intelligence about what pilots have actually achieved, is frequently the only reliable way to separate genuine opportunity from premature vendor narrative.