The services we provide are bundled across three Lines of Service: Assurance, Tax and Advisory, which are supported by our Internal Firm Services (Infrastructure, IT, Compliance, Marketing & Communications, Client Relationships & Sales, Market Research, Knowledge Management, to name a few of these support services).
Advisory
Our Advisory practice had a successful year, reporting a 9% growth in its core business and a 4.4% growth overall. In the current context, such performance demonstrates the high level of trust our clients have in our ability, reflecting the quality, relevance and impact of the advice that we provide.
During the year, we have accompanied clients in the execution of projects focusing on their current key challenges, and which we regroup under what we call the PwC Advisory Platforms, representing the key areas we see at the top of our clients' agendas:
- Operational Excellence
- Risk and Regulation
- Distribution
- Trust
- Innovation
- Sustainability
- Alternatives
- Workforce of the Future
- Customer Transformation
- Digital Transformation
- Business Strategy, among the most notable
With these platforms, we are better equipped to innovate and co-develop with our clients, in line with some of the biggest catalysts for change.
In addition, we have broadened our Advisory business in Luxembourg through the launch of Strategy&, PwC's well-renowned global strategy consulting business, to better accompany our clients from their strategy definition through to its execution.
Assurance
2021 was another successful year for our Assurance practice with a growth of 9.8% with the continued expansion of the Alternatives Industry.
Delivering quality services continues to be at the core of our purpose and in the uncertain and turbulent times of the COVID-19 pandemic has become more important than ever. As for our colleagues in Advisory and Tax, the investments made in both technology and our people have enabled our professionals to maintain the same level of commitment and quality despite the significant change in our physical work environment. While we are very proud of what has been achieved, we continuously strive to meet the growing demands and expectations of our stakeholders, be they our clients, our regulators, our people and society at large. This is achieved through a relentless focus on quality, the well being, development and retention of our talents, our digital and technology solutions and the broadening of our services. We have built and continue to build our capabilities and depth in our broader assurance services to provide the trust our stakeholders expect beyond our traditional focus on financial reporting; ESG being one of our core priorities.
Tax
In 2021, revenues from our Tax Services grew by 0.7%, against the backdrop of an increasingly complex and challenging environment, driven by various factors including the impact of the pandemic and local and global tax policy changes.
We experienced growing demand to help our clients navigate an increasingly complex tax landscape and the growing compliance burden. Demand in 2021 was particularly high for Tax & Accounting services in the Financial Services industry, and notably the Alternatives industry. In light of the challenges many businesses faced in meeting their reporting obligations remotely throughout the pandemic and their resource constraints, we assisted our clients with the effective transformation of their Tax & Accounting functions by offering co-sourcing and managed services solutions.
The global tax policy landscape continues evolving, at ever increasing pace. New global anti-avoidance and transfer pricing developments are currently leading the debate, but transparency, information sharing, technology and governance are not far behind. In Luxembourg, tax audits are also being performed on a systematic basis.
Looking ahead, Tax executives will need to assess how upcoming tax developments - including OECD Pillar 1 and 2 initiatives and increasing tax controversy - could affect their global tax burden. We are ready to help our clients deal with this ever increasing regulatory complexity, to assess the potential impact on the tax position, and to comply with their reporting obligations.
Internal Firm Services
The Internal Firm Services (IFS) team's main challenge is to increasingly provide the highest standard services to our business lines to ultimately serve our clients. To succeed, we focus on looking for efficiency, reviewing and adapting the delivery scope to the current needs, as well as increasing the quality of service we provide.
During this COVID-19 period, the IFS teams have been there every day to ensure our operations were adapted to the new working conditions. On top of their daily activities, they also went through significant transformation in areas like compliance, secretariat and business support, logistics and IT.
As COVID-19 was affecting our working lives, we took the opportunity to start developing our Workplace of the Future strategy in collaboration with our newly created Next Normal team. As a first step, we decided to close our second building in Hesperange City to regroup our people in our main headquarters while continuing to develop our network of satellite offices - close to the borders- to facilitate the commuting of our people in anticipation of a greater return to the office.
We are also placing a greater emphasis on talent development to better facilitate an evolving people experience underpinned by a growth mindset training boosting the collaboration of our teams in a positive and safe environment.
