Advisory

Main initiatives in 2019 and 2020

We saw growing demand from clients, across the board in all industries, to embed technology in their operations and in their finance and front office departments. This resulted in several projects around IT infrastructure reviews including the use of cloud solutions, the upgrade of their ERP and CRM solutions but also the confirmation of the central role of data and AI related technology in the strategy of our clients and in the development of innovative solutions and new services. Not surprisingly, the importance of cybersecurity has become unavoidable and our large team of ethical hackers and forensic specialists has been very busy.

During this fiscal year we engaged with several financial services clients in the review of their customer and employee journeys, and the underlying functional and technical architectures. Taking into account the clients goals, and drawing on PwC's Business, Customer Experience and Technology (BXT) framework, we defined new target journeys and architectures. BXT puts the customer first. The philosophy is to let customer experience shape and guide solutions that can effectively respond to the changing nature of markets and customers.

Our local or European Public Sector clients also increasingly see digitalisation as a way to cope with the challenges of modern society. Properly done, digitalisation results in operational efficiency and cost reduction. Along with digitalisation comes the opportunity to upskill the workforce and PwC can help businesses develop the right strategy with the right training and programmes to adapt the workforce to the “new normal”.

Our Regulatory and Compliance experts have been very active in supporting our clients in implementing proper governance, substance, risk frameworks and starting to prepare for their future sustainability and ESG journey that we expect to accelerate significantly in 2021. They also assisted numerous clients in their remediation journeys making sure they comply fully with all AML regulations from a compliance and tax perspectives.

Unlike previous years, when our Mergers and Acquisition (M&A) team was exceptionally busy, 2020 has proved to be slower. We attribute this to the "wait and see" sentiment until the market settles and sends out more clear signals. Their valuation and due diligence skills have been of great support to all our businesses.
Our service delivery model is also evolving towards more recurring services developed around Risk, Compliance, Reporting solutions as well as the signature of key joint business relationships with experts companies delivering with us innovative technology embedded solutions.

Finally PwC’s Academy continues to serve our broader community with interactive courses tailored for on-line delivery and participation. There has been a dramatic shift in virtual learning solutions in the past year, which was accelerated by COVID-19. We have been delivering all our inter- and intra-company training courses under webinar format since the beginning of the lockdown. As we were already used to delivering virtual training, we were confident that clients would easily switch to this format. And indeed, we have been observing a continuous increase in registrations. Our range of e-learning solutions provides a foundation level on several hot topics such as Financial Crime, Sustainable Finance, GDPR, MiFID II and many others. Webinars provide a deep dive into the related topic and favour interaction between the audience and our subject matter experts. We are increasingly blending webinars and e-learnings in tailored curriculums addressing the needs of specific roles within our clients’ organisation.