BMO has filed a provisional patent on a quantum algorithm for seismic forecasting, and is sending mobile branches to wildfire zones with AI dispatch. The bank says it is the future of risk.
Banks are not, as a rule, in the earthquake business. They are in the business of pricing risk, which is adjacent. Still, the operational job of telling the ground when it is about to move has historically belonged to seismologists, governments, and a handful of specialist insurers.
Bank of Montreal would like to change that, or at least to share the work.
In an interview with Bloomberg published on 1 May, Kristin Milchanowski, BMO’s recently appointed Chief AI and Quantum Officer, said the bank had filed a provisional patent on a quantum algorithm intended to help forecast earthquakes.
The same team, she said, is using artificial intelligence to dispatch mobile banking units to communities affected by wildfires, including those that swept through parts of Los Angeles last year.
It is an unusual portfolio for a Tier 1 Canadian lender, and it is meant to be.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
From back office to backstop
BMO formalised its bet last month with the launch of the BMO Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence & Quantum, announced on 9 April. The Institute, an enterprise-wide centre of excellence, is intended to consolidate the bank’s research, governance, and applied work in two technologies that have, until recently, sat at opposite ends of the maturity curve.
AI is everywhere in financial services, integrated into fraud detection, credit scoring, and customer service. Quantum computing, by contrast, is still mostly a research line, valuable in theory and largely unproven in deployed banking workflows.
Milchanowski, who spent the previous eighteen months as the bank’s chief AI and data officer, leads the Institute as its founding director. Days after its launch, BMO announced partnerships with Quantum Industry Canada and the Chicago Quantum Exchange, two of the more established quantum policy and research bodies in North America.
On paper, this is corporate housekeeping. In practice, it is a deliberate signal: BMO wants to be read as a quantum-curious bank, not just an AI-fluent one.
The provisional patent is, for now, the most concrete artefact of that ambition. Quantum algorithms are well-suited, in principle, to problems involving high-dimensional optimisation and combinatorial search, the kinds of computations that overwhelm classical hardware as data sets grow.
Seismic forecasting, which relies on enormous volumes of geophysical signal data and models that are notoriously difficult to fit, is one such problem.
Milchanowski did not, in the published interview, claim that BMO had cracked it. The patent is provisional, the algorithm has not been independently benchmarked, and useful quantum hardware capable of running such workloads at scale does not yet exist outside research labs.
What the filing represents is intent, and a small bet on optionality. If quantum advantage in this domain ever materialises, BMO will own a piece of it.
There is also a more immediate commercial logic. Better catastrophe modelling has direct applications in insurance, mortgage portfolios, and infrastructure lending, all areas where Canadian banks have meaningful exposure and where climate-driven loss patterns are forcing a rethink of underwriting.
If quantum is a long-dated option, the bank’s AI work is already in production. Milchanowski told Bloomberg that BMO is using AI models to identify communities cut off by wildfire and to route mobile branch units, essentially banks-on-wheels, into them.
The Los Angeles fires of early 2025 left tens of thousands of residents without access to physical banking; AI dispatch, in the bank’s telling, helps reduce the lag between displacement and service restoration.
This is not a glamorous use case. It will not feature in earnings calls. But it is the kind of work that distinguishes AI-as-marketing from AI-as-operations, and it is consistent with a broader pattern at BMO, which has been quieter than some peers about its AI roadmap and more visible about its applied projects.
The timing also matters. Bloomberg reported earlier this month that the wider financial industry is bifurcating in its quantum stance. Goldman Sachs has scaled back parts of its quantum research effort, while JPMorgan continues to invest. BMO’s announcement positions it on the investment side of that line, although on a smaller scale.
Whether any of this produces returns within the typical investor horizon is another question. Quantum hardware capable of solving real-world problems faster than classical alternatives is, by the consensus estimate of researchers, several years away.
BMO is essentially arguing that the risks of being late outweigh the costs of being early.
It is a defensible position, particularly for a bank with substantial climate exposure and a reputational interest in showing it takes the technology seriously. It is also, by definition, a bet that may not pay for years, if it pays at all.
For now, the most novel thing the bank can show for it is a piece of paper at the US Patent and Trademark Office and a fleet of mobile branches arriving where the smoke has cleared.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.