By applying quantitative models, he once cut hospital forecasting errors to within 10%, the same skills he now uses to shape risk management at one of world’s largest banks
In April 2025, the International Monetary Fund cautioned that global financial stability risks have “increased significantly,” citing high debt, volatile markets, and fragile institutions as the main pressure points. When shocks can spread worldwide in seconds, decision-makers need more than experience or instinct. They need models capable of stress-testing economies and quantifying risks across entire systems.
This is precisely what the discipline of quantitative finance is about. It’s the science of turning data and equations into tools for pricing securities, predicting credit losses, or forecasting cash flows. Yet for many outside the industry, the term still sounds abstract.
So how does quantitative finance work in practice, and why does it matter for everyone? To answer, we turn to Abdelmadjid Laouedj, a Quantitative Researcher at JPMorgan Chase & Co., the world’s largest bank by market capitalization, who recently participated as a judge at an International Business Award Cases and Faces (Chicago 2025 ). He is a graduate of CentraleSupélec, one of France’s top engineering schools, and the Master of Financial Engineering program at UC Berkeley, ranked among the best worldwide in the field. With this rare academic pedigree and his current role at a global financial leader, Abdelmadjid Laouedj stands at the intersection of mathematics, technology, and real-world finance.
In this article, we use Abdelmadjid Laouedj’s career as a lens to show the impact of quantitative finance: from hospitals to investment banks to global regulators.
What Is Quantitative Finance?
Quantitative finance, often shortened to “quant finance,” applies mathematical and computational techniques to solve financial problems. Instead of relying on intuition, it uses data, probability, and models to evaluate risk and guide decisions.
As Abdelmadjid puts it: “In simple terms, quantitative finance is about turning uncertainty into numbers. Instead of guessing, we use data and models to measure risks, test scenarios, and give decision-makers clear evidence they can act on.”
Some of the core functions of quantitative finance include managing risk by estimating the probability and scale of potential losses, pricing complex instruments such as options, futures, and structured products, modeling credit risk to anticipate defaults and recovery rates, forecasting cash flows and market volatility, and optimizing portfolios to strike the right balance between risk and return.
Abdelmadjid notes: “At its best, quantitative finance makes complex markets more transparent, helps institutions allocate resources responsibly, and reduces systemic risk.” But how does this translate into real work?
Quantitative Finance in Healthcare
Laouedj first demonstrated the power of quantitative methods outside the traditional banking world. Working at Europe’s largest cancer center, Gustave Roussy, he designed and implemented a predictive cash-flow model that combined time-series analysis and regression techniques to forecast liquidity with a high degree of precision. The challenge was significant: the hospital faced massive inflows and outflows from sources as varied as government subsidies, insurance reimbursements, research grants, and private funding. “I wanted to move beyond spreadsheets and build a model that could actually mirror the hospital’s financial reality. By combining time-series and regression approaches, I created forecasts that could be evaluated and analyzed by finance leaders to anticipate liquidity shortfalls or cash surpluses,” Abdelmadjid recalls.
Before his project, treasury planning at the hospital relied on spreadsheets, leaving leaders vulnerable to errors and blind spots in cash flow management. For an institution with a budget in the hundreds of millions, even a small forecasting mistake could translate into tens of millions of euros at risk.
As Abdelmadjid explains: “I built a forecasting tool that significantly reduced manual processing requirements and achieved high predictive accuracy in back-testing. Most importantly, the model demonstrated how liquidity gaps and surpluses could be identified in advance, providing a quantitative basis for understanding liquidity dynamics in a complex healthcare institution.”
This is quantitative finance in action, turning complex real-world data into a transparent forecasting framework that demonstrates the potential of quantitative methods to address liquidity risk in large healthcare institutions. But if the hospital case showed how models can secure essential services, his next step revealed how the same tools could be harnessed for value creation in global markets.
Engineering Value in Investment Banking and Expert Judging
This ability to turn theory into practical value led Abdelmadjid into investment banking, where he designed structured products worth tens of millions of euros, using advanced simulations such as Monte Carlo to price them. These are financial instruments banks tailor for pension funds, insurers, and other institutions, balancing risk and return according to each client’s needs. For Laouedj, it was an environment that demanded both mathematical precision and sharp market intuition, deepening his passion for quantitative finance.
Here, quantitative finance reveals another side: not just risk control, but value creation. By encoding client needs into mathematical models, it turns abstract formulas into customized financial opportunities.
This dual experience, protecting institutions on one side and building financial products on the other, prepared him for his current role at JPMorgan Chase, where the stakes involve not just clients but the stability of the entire financial system.
In addition to his technical work, Abdelmadjid Laouedj was invited to serve on the Jury Board of the International Business Award Cases & Faces (Chicago 2025) based on his demonstrated expertise in quantitative finance, data analytics, and technology-driven transformation. Within this framework, Laouedj evaluated nominations in the Banking and Financial Services domains, with particular focus on Achievement in Engineering and innovation-driven submissions. His role required the comparative assessment of advanced financial, analytical, and technology-based solutions, translating complex methodologies into objective criteria and measurable benchmarks. This independent judging role demonstrates how quantitative expertise extends beyond internal institutions into peer-reviewed evaluation environments where credibility and sound judgment are essential.
As financial markets become more volatile and data more abundant, quantitative finance is set to grow in importance. Laouedj envisions integrating AI and alternative data into next-generation models, making them both more powerful and more transparent. His goal is not only to refine how banks manage risk, but also to make quantitative finance more accessible to decision-makers and regulators — ensuring that its benefits extend beyond specialists. “The future of quant finance isn’t just about more complex models,” he notes. “It’s about making them transparent and usable, so their benefits can extend beyond the specialists and support resilience across the entire financial system.”
Quantitative finance may sound abstract, but Abdelmadjid Laouedj’s career makes it tangible. From forecasting hospital cash flows to designing derivatives and building global risk models, his work shows how mathematics can safeguard institutions, meet regulatory standards, and even support critical public services.
As financial institutions invest billions into analytics and risk technology, experts like Laouedj remind us that behind the equations lies a simple purpose: to bring clarity, resilience, and foresight to a financial world that affects us all.
We need to mention judging in the intro then as well, let’s do it here instead
I shortened it a lot as articles shouldn’t repeat contest information ss detailed, just a mention is enough
ok, thank you
