Mr Whiteing said the bank's decision to make the investment in the project was two-fold and that it intended to develop its own capabilities.

"There is a commercialisation element of it which we're excited about, but that's only one reason why we made the commitment," he said.

"Another key part of the commitment was that we were able to get involved with the team of 180 researchers and experimenters, we were able to start driving our understanding of what quantum will do ... and we were able to get some of our talented people working over the next five to 10 years to build some of that capability in-house."

The blockchain

The Commonwealth Bank has also been experimenting with blockchain, which allows a list of transactions to be shared among a number of computers, rather than on a central server, and the secure ledger updates in almost real-time across all the systems in the network.

Professor Michelle Simmons and David Whiteing at UNSW's quantum lab after the bank invested. Peter Braig

In January it announced that it was testing simulated trading on blockchain with 10 of the world's leading banks and Mr Whiteing told the conference that the bank had completed more than 25 blockchain-related experiments to date.

"We shouldn't be excited about the blockchain as a construct, but what we should be excited about is the possibility of the things we can do on top of the blockchain. That's what interests us as a business.


"There's a large number of areas where there is friction in the system today. Trade finance contracts, for example, on average take 28 to 30 days to clear ... all of those elements that sit in a trade finance contract could be codified in the blockchain and they could be automatically cleared ... the settlement of a trade finance contract could spring to two to three days globally."

Despite the advances the bank is making in new technologies and creating a more innovative culture, Mr Whiteing admitted that one of his major worries was getting the balance right between maximising its big player advantage, and moving fast enough to ward off the newcomers.

"You can't out-Google Google ... and to some extent we're not going to out-fintech fintechs," he said.

"We have to be very thoughtful about our proposition and our proposition as a universal bank should revolve around convenience, a near digital-like experience and an ability to engender trust through what we do.

"The one thing I wrestle with sometimes as a leader with that advantage and that success is that it can lead to complacency and I worry that we don't always have the urgency that the circumstances require us to have."