Accounting Disrupted

CHAPTER 7Digitalization and Auditing

There are experts that are good in finance, and there are experts that are good in technology. To find an auditor that is good in both and understands the interdependencies is tough. But that is what we really need.¹

—Isabel Witte, VP Finance and controller, Siemens Healthcare

GL.ai is a technology capable of analyzing documents and preparing reports using reinforcement learning. The system was developed by PwC and a Silicon Valley company with an expertise in AI‐enabled logic applications. GL.ai learns and becomes more capable with every audit. It has been trained on audit data from Canada, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The way it works is to harness the firm's global knowledges and experience, which gets embedded into algorithms that replicate the thinking and decision‐making of expert auditors. It will examine every uploaded transaction from users and find discrepancies, errors and possible fraud analyzing billions of data points in milliseconds. The system is being advanced and uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to help make sense of complex lease agreements, revenue contracts, and board meeting minutes and to provide meaningful insights for clients. It sees what humans cannot and the more it's used – the smarter it gets! The technology is a prize‐winning audit innovation – and fast learning to become better.²

Now is a time of significant change for audit assurance services. There exist many examples of assurance work ...