Reducing risks: Modern AI contract intelligence and digital identity in concert

As enterprises increase their adoption of AI, trust is changing. Contracts – the very foundation of every commercial relationship – are evolving from static documents into active sources of intelligence that shape decisions, compliance, and customer experience. Despite this, many organisations still rely on legacy processes that slow operations, obscure risk, and erode confidence.

The next phase of AI-driven digital transformation hinges on trust. Regulators, investors, and customers want evidence that systems are secure, explainable, and compliant. It’s no longer enough to claim responsible AI use. Organisations must be able to demonstrate it through clear audit trails and verified identities across every agreement.

From documents to data

Contractual agreements have long been the most under-optimised assets in business. But rather than offering value, they’re far too often a source of friction. Flat static files hidden within legacy systems mean slow review cycles, missed renewals, and unmanaged obligations. The cost? A nearly $2 trillion/£420bn drain on global productivity, according to Deloitte.

AI is changing that equation. When agreements include data, workflows can be coordinated, measured, and continuously improved. AI-driven contract lifecycle management (CLM) automates the repetitive tasks that previously consumed legal, procurement, finance, HR, and sales teams – among others. AI can automate tasks ranging from clause comparison and redline routing to approval tracking and exception handling.

Purpose-built agreement intelligence systems are emerging to support this shift. Unlike general large language models (LLMs), they use agreement-specific training to interpret clauses, surface risks, and extract key metrics with precision that compliance teams can trust. This enables enterprises to analyse agreements in seconds, identify patterns, and bring the relevant issues to human judgement, freeing experts to focus on strategic decisions rather than administrative detail.

A new model for contract intelligence

Across industries, AI-driven contract intelligence is compressing review times, highlighting risks and standardising playbooks. It is also transforming contract text into operational data that feeds into CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and supplier-risk systems.

There may be missing terms or non-standard languages or terms that are incompatible with current regulations, for example, relating to the jurisdiction the contract covers – if the organisation’s playbook, including the jurisdiction knowledge, is encoded in Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM). That data can be used to inform everything from cash-flow forecasting to sustainability reporting.

The benefits are tangible. Interviews with enterprise users show that effective CLM deployments can deliver many benefits, including:

• Reduce time spent generating new sales contracts by up to 90%,
• Cut research labour for vendor terms by 80%,
• Lower error rates by as much as 85%.

These improvements translate directly into faster revenue recognition, improved compliance, and reduced risk exposure.

Automated clause detection and policy alignment are also enhancing governance. By generating audit-ready evidence across jurisdictions, these systems help organisations demonstrate adherence to regulatory obligations such as KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering). Faster agreement cycles shorten time-to-value, while enhanced visibility into renewals or liability caps enables proactive renegotiation and risk mitigation.

Closing the verification gap

As AI reshapes how agreements are created and managed, identity security is fundamental. Nearly 70% of executives in Docusign’s Future of Digital Identity Report says fraud attempts are rising, costing businesses an average of £5.5m ($7m). Organisations relying solely on passwords face the greatest exposure to risk, while even multi-factor authentication (MFA) can be defeated by sophisticated attacks.

Robust identity verification (IDV) offers a path forward. Combining biometrics, liveness checks, and risk-based signals protects against both fraud losses and user friction. Many enterprises are now planning to increase investment in these areas after measurable reductions in fraud incidents.

Overall, businesses that use IDV are 2x more satisfied than businesses that do not use IDV. They often find their fraud prevention methods significantly more effective. As a result, 2.8x as many organisations that already invest more in IDV are more likely to plan to invest even more in IDV. With attempted digital fraud continuing to rise year-on-year, layered verification has become a frontline defence.

Crucially, modern authentication shows that security and experience no longer have to compete. Effective verification enables legitimate users to move quickly, while higher-risk interactions trigger additional checks. The result is better protection and risk mitigation throughout the customer journey without unnecessary friction; an outcome both organisations and customers can support.

Building a new enterprise layer

Organisations are unifying the contract lifecycle into a single, coordinated workflow, from creation and negotiation to execution and management. Structured preparation, collaborative drafting, and shared workspaces help stakeholders stay aligned through multi-step processes. This ensures commitments and renewals remain visible, trackable, and compliant.

Intelligent AI review tools can recommend policy-aligned language, flag exceptions, and standardise custom data extraction so insights become operational rather than static. Layered IDV underpins crucial workflow stages – enrolment, high-risk actions, and final signature – combining efficiency with auditability.

This convergence of automation, identity, and contract intelligence created a new category of enterprise infrastructure: Intelligent Agreement Management. IAM extends beyond CLM by integrating verification, compliance, and analytics into a continuous, data-driven ecosystem. The aim is simple: to make every agreement both a source of truth and a source of trust. Contracts can be completed and executed faster, while data can inform better commercial terms.

Catalysing more strategic decision-making

As AI agents become embedded in areas such as sales and procurement, the heavy lifting of search, review, comparison and drafting can be automated, leaving people to make nuanced, strategic decisions. The shift is not just operational but cultural, redefining how enterprises think about control, accountability, and compliance.

The trust gap is closing by design. With AI-driven agreement management and modern identity verification, organisations can prove identity with greater certainty, execute with greater efficiency, and demonstrate compliance across borders.

Because of that, the next wave of enterprise transformation will be measured not only by speed and efficiency, but also by the ability to demonstrate that digital transactions are as trustworthy as the people who sign them.

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Agree. Commit. Manage. Since inception in 2003, Docusign has been on a mission to accelerate business and simplify life for companies and people around the world. We pioneered the development of e-signature technology, and today Docusign helps organisations connect and automate how they prepare, sign, act on, and manage agreements. Docusign offers the world’s #1 way to sign electronically on practically any device, from almost anywhere, at any time. Our value is simple to understand: Legacy, paper-based agreement processes are manual, slow, expensive, and error-prone. We eliminate the paper, automate the process, and connect it to all the other systems that businesses are already using, powered by specialised, enterprise-grade AI.

Our platform has 350+ prebuilt integrations with popular business apps. In addition, our API enables embedding and connecting Docusign with customers’ websites, mobile apps, and custom workflows. Today, more than 1,000,000 customers and hundreds of millions of users in over 180 countries use Docusign to accelerate the process of doing business and to simplify people’s lives under the mission of helping people come together and agree.

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