Abstract Non-performing loans present a significant challenge to financial institutions, driven by the complexity of the dataset, default probability, and default correlation(Bellotti et al., 2019). To mitigate this risk, this study investigates the potential of Machine Learning (ML) and Quantum Machine Learning (QML) algorithms for forecasting loan risk. Using a dataset from Kaggle, we conducted a comparative analysis between Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM).Our result using a dataset of 12,368 records and 12 features shows that the QSVM model outperformed SVM, with a higher true positive rate (93.2.%) and true negative rate (87.6%), demonstrating better performance in identifying both default and non-default cases. Additionally, QSVM exhibits a lower false negative rate indicating its superior ability to minimize clients likely to default. The AUC score of 1.0 for the QSVM further demonstrates its exceptional ability in loan prediction. While the dataset used allowed for a solid comparison, QSVM demonstrated its capacity to continue improving with larger datasets, showing its scalability and strong potential application in loan risk forecasting especially with larger datasets.
Abstract Non-performing loans present a significant challenge to financial institutions, driven by the complexity of the dataset, default probability, and default correlation(Bellotti et al., 2019). To mitigate this risk, this study investigates the potential of Machine Learning (ML) and Quantum Machine Learning (QML) algorithms for forecasting loan risk. Using a dataset from Kaggle, we conducted a comparative analysis between Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM).Our result using a dataset of 12,368 records and 12 features shows that the QSVM model outperformed SVM, with a higher true positive rate (93.2.%) and true negative rate (87.6%), demonstrating better performance in identifying both default and non-default cases. Additionally, QSVM exhibits a lower false negative rate indicating its superior ability to minimize clients likely to default. The AUC score of 1.0 for the QSVM further demonstrates its exceptional ability in loan prediction. While the dataset used allowed for a solid comparison, QSVM demonstrated its capacity to continue improving with larger datasets, showing its scalability and strong potential application in loan risk forecasting especially with larger datasets.
Quantum Machine Learning (QML) offers a transformative approach to financial forecasting by enhancing predictive accuracy and cybersecurity resilience. This study evaluates QML’s effectiveness using financial market data from Yahoo Finance, comparing Quantum Long Short-Term Memory (QLSTM) to classical LSTM and ARIMA models. Security vulnerabilities were assessed using the IEEE DataPort adversarial attack dataset, while encryption performance was analyzed using Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) data from NIST. Experimental results demonstrate that QLSTM outperforms classical models, achieving lower RMSE (1.82), MAE (1.45), and MSE (3.31), indicating superior forecasting precision. Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVM) exhibit increased adversarial robustness, limiting accuracy degradation to 11.67% under FGSM attacks and 15.60% under PGD attacks, whereas classical models suffer losses exceeding 24%. QKD provides a substantial security advantage over RSA-4096, achieving a 5.87 bps secure key rate and demonstrating over 100 years of resistance to quantum attacks, reinforcing its role as a next-generation cybersecurity mechanism for financial institutions. Despite these advantages, the adoption of QML in financial forecasting faces challenges related to high computational costs, hardware limitations, and integration complexities. Quantum security frameworks require significant infrastructure investments to ensure scalability and reliability. Financial institutions must prioritize QML investment, integrate quantum security mechanisms, and collaborate with regulatory bodies to establish standardized guidelines for secure financial applications. This study contributes to the growing field of quantum-enhanced financial analytics, highlighting its potential to mitigate cyber threats and improve financial forecasting reliability while addressing existing implementation barriers.
Predicting loan defaults is important to financial institutions for risk management and improving loaning policies. This research uses the LendingClub Loan Dataset comprising 2.26 million records with features such as credit score, debt income ratio, and loan amount, and applies a novel methodology for loan default and repayment behavior prediction with quantum-enhanced predictive analytics. The methodology uses embedded learning to disperse high-dimensional financial data into a low-dimensional quantum feature space. Coupled with a QML classifier, the framework demonstrated solid performance within a federated setting. The experimental findings indicate a ROC AUC of 0.897, surpassing classical machine learning baselines. The method preserves the data privacy through federated learning, thus applicable for sensitive financial contexts. This work demonstrates the ability of quantum analytics to enhance the predictive accuracy of loan defaults at scale.
The growing complexity, interdependencies, and rapid fluctuations inherent in modern financial markets create substantial challenges for accurate forecasting, portfolio optimization, and risk management. Conventional machine learning techniques, while powerful, often face limitations in capturing nonlinear relationships and processing high-dimensional datasets efficiently. Quantum machine learning (QML) has emerged as a promising paradigm that leverages quantum computing principles to enhance predictive modeling in finance. This study presents a comprehensive investigation into the application of QML methods—including variational quantum circuits, quantum kernel estimation, and quantum-enhanced support vector machines—for financial time-series prediction and asset price classification. We propose a hybrid quantum-classical framework that integrates quantum feature mapping with classical optimizers to improve model expressiveness and convergence. Empirical experiments are conducted using historical stock market data and synthetic datasets to benchmark QML approaches against established classical models such as long short-term memory networks and gradient boosting machines. The results demonstrate that QML techniques can achieve superior prediction accuracy and lower computational latency under certain data regimes, particularly when dealing with small-to-medium-sized datasets and high feature correlations. Additionally, the study examines scalability considerations, hardware constraints of near-term quantum devices, and the interpretability of quantum model outputs in financial decision-making contexts. The findings underscore the transformative potential of quantum machine learning as an innovative tool for advancing predictive analytics in finance and provide practical insights into how financial institutions can begin integrating QML capabilities into their workflows.
In the financial sector, machine learning (ML) has emerged as a transformative technology that provides sophisticated solutions to critical challenges, such as in fraud detection, anti-money laundering, algorithmic trading, credit scoring, and financial forecasting. ML significantly improves the accuracy, speed, and efficacy of decision-making processes by using sophisticated algorithms and large datasets. Nevertheless, its integration into financial systems presents significant obstacles such as cybersecurity threats, regulatory compliance, and data quality concerns. Building on these developments, this review examines the emergence of quantum machine learning (QML), an approach that integrates quantum-computation principles with intelligent financial systems. QML exploits quantum phenomena, including superposition, entanglement, and parallelism, to overcome the computational constraints encountered in classical ML. Applications such as quantum support vector machines (QSVMs), quantum neural networks (QNNs), and quantum clustering are examined in the context of fraud detection, portfolio optimization, and market forecasting. In contrast to previous reviews, this study provides a comparative and integrative analysis of ML and QML in the financial domain. It highlights the current technical limitations and emergent hybrid quantum classical models, emphasizing strategic directions for future research. In addition, we suggest a new framework for assessing the suitability of QML in practical financial applications, thereby bridging the gap between theoretical potential and real-world deployment. This review not only consolidates recent advancements but also establishes the foundation for the next iteration of intelligent financial systems powered by quantum-enhanced technologies. • Quantum Machine Learning (QML) leverages unique quantum properties like superposition, entanglement, and parallelism to overcome the computational limitations of traditional ML approaches. • Techniques such as Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVM), Quantum Neural Networks (QNN), and quantum clustering demonstrate significant advancements in efficiency and accuracy for financial applications. • QML showcases transformative potential in solving complex financial problems, including fraud detection, portfolio optimization, and market forecasting, with greater accuracy and computational efficiency. • The potential for hybrid quantum-classical models to stabilize hardware and advance quantum algorithms offers a pathway to overcome current limitations, paving the way for scalable and robust financial systems.
The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that traditional statistical problems in credit scoring can be solved efficiently by implementing a quantum-enhanced version of the traditional Support Vector Machines algorithm. Three significant case studies are presented, involving regression, dichotomous and multi-class classification problems in the field of credit risk management. The analysis highlights the promise of the quantum kernel method as a competitive solution especially for multiclass problems with strongly structured features. Quantum-enhanced models tend to outperform classical approaches because they can capture more intricate non-linear relationships between variables, partly due to their ability to leverage entanglement. This advantage is particularly evident in credit risk assessment, where it can improve the credit evaluation process and help reduce credit losses for financial and insurance institutions.
Accurate prediction of future loan defaults is a critical capability for financial institutions that provide lines of credit. For institutions that issue and manage extensive loan volumes, even a slight improvement in default prediction precision can significantly enhance financial stability and regulatory adherence, resulting in better customer experience and satisfaction. Datasets associated with credit default prediction often exhibit temporal correlations and high dimensionality. These attributes can lead to accuracy degradation and performance issues when scaling classical predictive algorithms tailored for these datasets. Given these limitations, quantum algorithms, leveraging their innate ability to handle high-dimensionality problems, emerge as a promising new avenue alongside classical approaches. To assess the viability and effectiveness of quantum methodologies, we investigate a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm, utilizing a publicly available "Default Prediction Dataset" released as part of a third-party data science competition. Specifically, we employ hybrid quantum-classical machine learning models based on projected quantum feature maps and their ensemble integration with classical models to examine the problem of credit card default prediction. Our results indicate that the ensemble models based on the projected quantum features were capable of slightly improving the purely classical results expressed via a "Composite Default Risk" (CDR) metric. Furthermore, we discuss the practical applicability of the studied quantum-classical machine learning techniques and address open questions concerning their implementation.