It’s 2056. The asset finance industry is fully automated and seamless.

In its 2055 Survey of Economic Activity, the ELFA estimates that its members will finance $123.7 trillion.

IT departments in the four remaining colossal lessors (three multi-national banks and TeslaLease, the last remaining independent) through the use of fourth generation Artificial Intelligence residing on the Amazing Web Services Cloud Computing Time Sharing Services, have extracted Accounting Standards Codification 842, IFRS 16, GASB Statement No. 87, IRS Revenue Ruling 55-541, IRS Revenue Procedures 75-21, 2001-28, 2001-29, IRC Sec 168, IRC Sec 7701(e), IRC Sec 7701(h), IRS MACRS rules, IRC section 467, IRC Sec 30C, 45, 45Q, 45U, 45V, 45W, 45X, 45Y, 45Q, 48, 48C, 48E, OCC Reg Y, OCC 12 USC 24 and 23, U.C.C. – Article 2A, the CLFP manual, Leasing-101.net training, Principles of Corporate Finance by Richard A. Brealey, Stewart C. Myers, Franklin Allen, the HP 12-C Handbook, and INSIGHT: Should I Lease or Buy? New Tax and Accounting Rules Add Complexity by Bill Bosco.

The remaining lessors have developed or bought the best lessor lease management, lease pricing, ERP and CRM applications. They interviewed the three remaining leasing folks who remember the lease accounting changes, 40 years earlier in 2016, and the Trump tax reform changes found in The One Big Beautiful Bill of 2025. The interview took place in the Future Value Home for retired ELFA members, where they will spend the rest of their economically useful lives. They seemed happy, clutching their HP-99s, and the oldest one held a tattered copy of FAS 13.

Chips, manufactured by ChipLease, Inc., are implanted in MBA students’ heads when they enroll. The chips contain all they need to have a successful career as a leasing salesperson or CFO/Treasurer. All a CFO must do is think about financing a new asset, and the chips of the lessor salespeople vibrate. If the deal is less than $ 10 million, it automatically gets funded once the CFO’s brain is probed for asset details, accounting regime, tax status and key financial reporting measures. The system automatically selects the best financial product. If the deal exceeds $10 million, MapQuest appears in the leasing salespersons’ AutoLease Eyewear, directing them to the CFO’s location. Hovercrafts zoom them to meet the lessee, and the first one there usually gets the deal. The meeting is to get a fingerprint and retina scan to make the agreement enforceable under current UCC law. This is not done for deals of less than $10 million, as that would take too long, and the lessors have provisions for losses to absorb any fraud or bad debt expenses.

On a typical Monday morning, December 11, 2056, the financial world is hit with a major cyberattack, and all systems are down; the CFO and salespersons’ chips fail to communicate. It happens just as Lisa Lessor, salesperson of Other People’s Money Leasing, is answering the call to meet Sam Cash, CFO of MeggaCo, to talk about a potential $50 million deal. Lisa realizes she can’t communicate with her mainframe as the backup to the ChipLease com app has lost communication due to one of the often recurring solar spots As she shakes hands with Sam Cash, she remembers some old training from 25 years ago that she received from Leasing 101, before full automation, when her career began and asks what the asset is and if anything has changed with MeggaCo since his last deal. Sam gives her some details; he says a foreign company bought MeggaCo last year, mentions BEAT, FDII, EBITDA and NOL. Lisa Lessor frowns, not remembering fully what these terms mean, but she memorizes what he says. She excuses herself to use the restroom.

She panics as she leaves because she doesn’t know much about lease structuring these days, since AI does virtually everything. None of her fellow employees, other than the IT staff, know how the “guts” of the business work these days, as they had to understand how to automate the process and make it thought-free and seamless. But then she remembered her cellphone — it was an Apple 992, the most advanced to date. She pulls it out and says, “Siri, give me the proper structure for a company with an NOL subject to BEAT and FDII and with foreign ownership that favors a positive effect on EBITDA.”

And the rest is history, as Lisa Lessor smiles while SIRI gives her the answer (We unfortunately can’t reveal it here. You’ll just need to get good leasing sales training). She receives a notification through her embedded bank account chip of the immediate increase in her bank account from the robust leasing commission she has just earned. Time to get that new yellow Ferrari F5000!