Case Study: Deloitte Harnesses the Power of Kira for Lease Accounting Contract Review

Compliance with IFRS 16

The new standard, which will be effective on January 1, 2019, introduces a new accounting treatment of leases. As a result, IFRS 16 can have a significant impact on companies of all sizes, depending on the breadth of their leasing arrangements. In this regard, leases covering everything from equipment to real property are covered under the new standard.

IFRS 16 compliance involves an in-depth and high-volume review of a company’s leases. By combining Kira Systems’ machine learning technology with Deloitte’s team of experienced professionals, the firm has been able to complete large lease review projects within very accelerated timelines.

Many customers do not have the scalable internal resources to complete the review of these leases, or underestimate just how many leases they have to review. We have adopted state-of-the-art technology that allows us to provide efficient, high quality contract review services to clients so that they can focus their resources on higher-value tasks.

Andrea Taylor, Partner with Deloitte and the leader of the firm’s Legal Project Solutions team

The Review Process

Kira facilitates Deloitte’s end-to-end solution for IFRS 16 lease review. The firm’s audit and advisory teams have created an efficient workflow that leverages their multidisciplinary expertise from the initial document collection and culling phase, through to the final risk analysis provided to clients.

On a recent IFRS 16 engagement, Deloitte deployed Kira to review approximately 2,500 equipment and real property leases for assets across Canada and the United States, including leases in both English and French. The firm leveraged its scalable team of bilingual contractor lawyers to complete the review of the leases. Employing Kira’s built-in models, as well as the Quick Study tool’s functionality allowing for the training of new models, the team extracted upwards of 40 data points and clauses from the leases. The firm’s audit and advisory teams then exported Kira’s results directly into an Excel report and provided the client with a detailed risk assessment.

Benefits to Contract Management Beyond IFRS 16

Deloitte’s review capabilities, which are accelerated by Kira, can also be leveraged for organizations looking to implement contract management solutions, including Deloitte’s own dTrax contract management technology. On this engagement, Deloitte used Kira to extract provisions that were unrelated to the lease review in order to populate and enhance the client’s new contract management system. In so doing, Deloitte added further value to the process beyond what was necessary for IFRS 16 compliance. Additionally, by combining the two review processes, the team achieved efficiencies that resulted in significant cost savings for the client.

Using the review as an opportunity to extract data for our client’s new contract management system enabled us to add value to the lease review process beyond IFRS 16, and provide our client with valuable information that it will be able to leverage in other contexts.

Gregory Sullivan, Director with Deloitte’s Legal Project Solutions team

Enhanced Review with Kira

Deloitte used both Kira’s built-in provision models, and its machine learning tool, Quick Study, to impart the knowledge and expertise of their professionals into its own provision models that found client-specific data points. By combining these models with Kira’s versatile search features, reviewers were able to hone in on the relevant contract provisions to complete the review in about 30% less time than if the review had been completed manually.

The benefits extended to the project management and risk analysis components of the engagement. Kira’s database analytics put important project metrics front and centre, so that deadlines and resources were more easily monitored. Once leases were reviewed, Kira’s spreadsheet outputs allowed for easy comparison between similar provisions, and provided a means to easily identify risks in outlier agreements.

By implementing Kira, Deloitte is well-positioned to assist its clients on contract review engagements beyond IFRS 16, including M&A due diligence, contract management system implementation through Deloitte’s dTrax technology, and regulatory compliance. Deloitte’s scalable and flexible model, as well as its technical and substantive expertise, provides clients with the ability to conduct a thorough and robust contract review more efficiently and, ultimately, at a lower cost than alternative solutions.

We combined Kira with our expertise in project management to increase efficiency and accuracy, and to help our team prioritize our review and reduce the risk of errors or omissions. The result was higher quality reports and outputs that were customized to our clients' needs.

Abrar Huq, Senior Manager in Deloitte’s Strategic Analytics and Modelling practice