diff --git a/test/benchmarks/conftest.py b/test/benchmarks/conftest.py
index d58e9ce55..16d7c3491 100644
--- a/test/benchmarks/conftest.py
+++ b/test/benchmarks/conftest.py
@@ -7,17 +7,18 @@
 
 
 @pytest.fixture(scope="session")
-def onnx_adaptive_model_qa(use_gpu, num_processes):
-    model_name_or_path = "deepset/bert-base-cased-squad2"
-    onnx_model_export_path = Path("benchmarks/onnx-export")
-    if not (onnx_model_export_path / "model.onnx").is_file():
+def onnx_adaptive_model_qa(use_gpu, num_processes, model_name_or_path="deepset/bert-base-cased-squad2"):
+    if (Path(model_name_or_path) / "model.onnx").is_file():  # load model directly if in ONNX format
+        onnx_model_path = model_name_or_path
+    else:  # convert to ONNX format
+        onnx_model_path = Path("benchmarks/onnx-export")
         model = AdaptiveModel.convert_from_transformers(
             model_name_or_path, device="cpu", task_type="question_answering"
         )
-        model.convert_to_onnx(onnx_model_export_path)
+        model.convert_to_onnx(onnx_model_path)
 
     model = Inferencer.load(
-        onnx_model_export_path, task_type="question_answering", batch_size=1, num_processes=num_processes, gpu=use_gpu
+        onnx_model_path, task_type="question_answering", batch_size=1, num_processes=num_processes, gpu=use_gpu
     )
 
     return model