Quantum Amplitude Estimation for Catastrophe Insurance Tail-Risk Pricing: Empirical Convergence and NISQ Noise Analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Kirke, Alexis
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Kirke, Alexis
author_facet Kirke, Alexis
contents Classical Monte Carlo methods for pricing catastrophe insurance tail risk converge at order reciprocal root N, requiring large simulation budgets to resolve upper-tail percentiles of the loss distribution. This sample-sparsity problem can lead to AI models trained on impoverished tail data, producing poorly calibrated risk estimates where insolvency risk is greatest. Quantum Amplitude Estimation (QAE), following Montanaro, achieves convergence approaching order reciprocal N in oracle queries - a quadratic speedup that, at scale, would enable high-resolution tail estimation within practical budgets. We validate this advantage empirically using a Qiskit Aer simulator with genuine Grover amplification. A complete pipeline encodes fitted lognormal catastrophe distributions into quantum oracles via amplitude encoding, producing small readout probabilities that enable safe Grover amplification with up to k=16 iterations. Seven experiments on synthetic and real (NOAA Storm Events, 58,028 records) data yield three main findings: an oracle-model advantage, that strong classical baselines win when analytical access is available, and that discretisation, not estimation, is the current bottleneck.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_15664
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Quantum Amplitude Estimation for Catastrophe Insurance Tail-Risk Pricing: Empirical Convergence and NISQ Noise Analysis
Kirke, Alexis
Applications
Artificial Intelligence
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Machine Learning
Classical Monte Carlo methods for pricing catastrophe insurance tail risk converge at order reciprocal root N, requiring large simulation budgets to resolve upper-tail percentiles of the loss distribution. This sample-sparsity problem can lead to AI models trained on impoverished tail data, producing poorly calibrated risk estimates where insolvency risk is greatest. Quantum Amplitude Estimation (QAE), following Montanaro, achieves convergence approaching order reciprocal N in oracle queries - a quadratic speedup that, at scale, would enable high-resolution tail estimation within practical budgets. We validate this advantage empirically using a Qiskit Aer simulator with genuine Grover amplification. A complete pipeline encodes fitted lognormal catastrophe distributions into quantum oracles via amplitude encoding, producing small readout probabilities that enable safe Grover amplification with up to k=16 iterations. Seven experiments on synthetic and real (NOAA Storm Events, 58,028 records) data yield three main findings: an oracle-model advantage, that strong classical baselines win when analytical access is available, and that discretisation, not estimation, is the current bottleneck.
title Quantum Amplitude Estimation for Catastrophe Insurance Tail-Risk Pricing: Empirical Convergence and NISQ Noise Analysis
topic Applications
Artificial Intelligence
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.15664