• 79% of respondents cannot reliably explain the reasoning behind the terms of their own commercial contracts, including why clauses were agreed to and what was negotiated away 
  
  

• 98% say their enterprise has experienced a financial or operational consequence as a result, including missed savings and rebates, repeated negotiating concessions and risks accepted without knowing their company’s prior position 
  
  

• Only 26% have a quick and reliable way to query their entire contract portfolio, despite 71% of respondents having contract lifecycle management (CLM) software. 

7 October, 2026 | London: New research commissioned by Luminance, the global leader in Contract Intelligence for the enterprise, and conducted by Censuswide for the report The Billion-Dollar Blind-Spot: The Untapped Value of Contract Intelligence Across Global Enterprises, ​​has found that 79% of enterprise leaders cannot reliably explain the reasoning behind their own commercial contracts: why clauses were agreed to, what was negotiated away and what terms set in the past mean for the business today. 

The findings, drawn from a survey of General Counsel, Chief Financial Officers, Heads of Procurement and other senior enterprise leaders across the US, UK, France and Germany, reveal a widespread gap between storing contracts and being able to use the intelligence within them and the value lost when companies are unable to act on commercially valuable information already held within their contracts.  

Contract storage without access to intelligence 

This latent value sits untapped because businesses cannot reliably locate the rationale behind why commercial terms were agreed, due to disconnected internal systems, displaced contracts, memory or time. Even where the information exists, it is trapped in silos.  

While 71% of respondents said their enterprise has a formal system designed to preserve contract knowledge, 96% of the same respondents reported losing access to contract knowledge anyway. What’s more, only a fifth (21%) said they have immediate access to the information within their contracts when they need it. 

More than half (53%) cannot get answers from their contracts without asking Legal (15%), contacting the contract owner (18%) or searching manually (20%). This means contractual knowledge remains fragmented across teams, systems, personal files and individual memory, rather than being available to the people responsible for managing risk, making decisions and capturing commercial value. The result is unnecessary cost and delay.  

The financial impact of inaccessible contract knowledge 

The consequences are already being felt across the enterprise. Almost every respondent (98%) said their organization had experienced at least one financial or operational consequence in the past two years. 

One in three (33%) had repeated a negotiating concession without knowing why it was originally agreed. Nearly a third (31%) had accepted legal or commercial risk without knowing their company’s prior position, while the same proportion (31%) had missed or delayed a saving, rebate or entitlement because the relevant information was not available. 

The value of this inaccessible knowledge is significant. Nearly one in three enterprises (31%) puts the value of contracts where the reasoning is undocumented above $1.3 billion, while one in ten (10%) puts it above $6.7 billion. 

External changes expose the gap 

The problem becomes even more acute when external events require an urgent response. In the past year, 89% of enterprises faced a business-sensitive change, such as a new tariff, interest-rate movement or supplier failure, that required an urgent review of their contractual position. 

Yet only 26% could obtain a fast, portfolio-wide answer. Nearly half (47%) could not get a complete view of their exposure, meaning they would check only their most important contracts, rely on whoever happened to remember the relevant terms or accept that they might miss something. A further 11% had no reliable way to answer at all. 

From contract storage to Contract Intelligence 

The findings point to the need for enterprises to move beyond storing contracts and extracting isolated data points. Contract Intelligence connects contractual terms with the context, history and relationships that give them meaning, then makes that intelligence accessible to the teams that need to act on it. 

By making contract knowledge searchable, explainable and available across the enterprise, Contract Intelligence can help Legal maintain oversight while enabling Finance, Procurement and other teams to answer routine questions, identify risk and act on commercial opportunities. 

"Businesses are not short of contractual knowledge. They are short of access to it," said Eleanor Lightbody, CEO of Luminance. "The decisions a company has made, the risks it has accepted and the commitments it has taken on are already captured in its contracts. But if that intelligence cannot be accessed at the point a decision is being made, its value is lost. Contract Intelligence is about turning that buried knowledge into something the whole enterprise can actually use."  

Read the full report here.

Media Contact:
Luminance@tancredigroup.com  

About Luminance:
Luminance is the Contract Intelligence platform that turns the language that defines a business into the intelligence it runs on. Born out of the University of Cambridge and purpose-built by AI, legal and technology experts, Luminance understands the history and context of every contract. It acts on that intelligence, proactively surfacing risk, flagging obligations, accelerating negotiations and driving action across Legal, Finance, Procurement, Sales and the wider business. It enables enterprises to learn from their contracts, while contracts learn from the enterprise, helping businesses make better decisions and move forward with confidence.