Firm files patent on service contract and warranty accounting

Kerper Bowron LLC, an actuarial, accounting and insurance consulting firm based in Birmingham, Alabama, and Irish Trinity LLC have filed U.S. and international patent applications for what they call the Kerper-Bowron Method — a way to forecast and account for liabilities for service contracts and manufacturer warranties. 

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They said the method replaces traditional aggregate earning curves with month-by-month projections that align directly with the revenue recognition standard ASC 606, as well as other standards such as ASC 460, IAS 37 and IFRS 17. They said the method would improve precision and auditability for revenue recognition and reserve estimation and enable new lending applications.

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At the same time, the firm announced that a new paper extending the method to manufacturer warranties and collateralization applications has been submitted for peer review and is now on SSRN. The paper builds on the authors' earlier work on a peer-reviewed paper on the method that has been published in the journal Risks. The applications claim priority to an earlier U.S. provisional patent application they filed in August 2025.

Partners John Kerper and Lee Bowron were named as inventors for the method, which they said Friday provides a contract-level probabilistic cash-flow forecasting approach for service contracts and manufacturer warranties.

"This filing and the concurrent submission of the new paper mark important steps in advancing and  protecting a method that brings contract-level precision to a large and complex market," said Bowron in a statement Friday. "By generating reliable monthly cash-flow projections for every  service contract and manufacturer warranty, the approach improves reserving accuracy and  creates new pathways for capital efficiency and risk transfer." 

The intellectual property is held by Irish Trinity LLC. Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP is serving as intellectual property counsel.


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Accounting Accounting standards Revenue recognition
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