Flagship Programme

Quantum optimisation

Tackling insurance's hardest problems, where classical methods were never designed to compete.

Why this programme

The challenge we are addressing

The insurance industry creates value through data-driven, computationally intensive approaches to the management of risk across society and at scale. Some of the highest-value problems in areas such as underwriting, reinsurance, capital modelling, and catastrophe risk are characterised by extreme uncertainty, complex dependency structures, and sparse tail data. In a world that is becoming increasingly complex and dynamic, classical modelling and optimisation techniques are failing in these settings. Quantum computing offers algorithmic primitives for optimisation, stochastic estimation, and dependency modelling that classical techniques cannot provide, yet few organisations have demonstrated practical capability to translate these theoretical advantages into operational insurance value.

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Our vision

To establish quantum computing as a discipline scientifically proven to deliver value for insurance's hardest problems and demonstrate replicable pathways for this technology from research to real-world impact.

Our distinctive position 

OXFIDA brings three convergent advantages:

proven quantum expertise, demonstrated through UK Quantum Hackathon victories in the 2024 and 2025 editions, and completed projects in post-disaster routing, scheduling, and logistics optimisation;

direct access to real-world insurance challenges and proprietary data across claims, underwriting, and operations;

a formalised pathway from research, through the quantum computing research ecosystem in Oxford, to deployment.

Our expert team, which combines quantum applications scientists, engineers, and business developers, is forging strong partnerships with quantum hardware vendors and the UK National Quantum Computing Centre, and we are always looking for opportunities to strengthen our collaboration with the UK, Japan and Oxford's research ecosystem, leading to rigorous research that translates results into scalable commercial applications.

Projects in this programme

Each project has its own page covering the problem, the approach, the partners and where it currently stands.