Transparency Report FY24

Welcome to our Transparency Report FY24

At PwC, our purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. We’re a network of firms in 149 countries with more than 370,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services. We are committed to driving a strong culture of quality and excellence that is core to our purpose.

Our approach to building trust is designed to meet rising expectations of transparency, accountability and stakeholder engagement. It combines expertise in audit, tax and compliance activities with a drive to expand specialist capabilities in areas such as cyber security, data privacy, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), and Artificial Intelligence (AI). It also recognises the importance of quality - and that reporting and compliance represent just one link in a chain that includes organisational culture, executive mindset, aligned standards, certified professionals, stringent controls, tailored technologies and appropriate governance. It is part of our public interest commitment to consistently perform quality engagements and be transparent about our system of quality management.

Similar to building trust, delivering sustained outcomes requires us to work in an integrated way. Instead of taking a traditional technology-driven approach to transformation, we focus on the outcomes that our work is seeking to achieve. To deliver the agreed outcomes, we mobilise our expertise in areas including – among many others – strategy, digital and cloud services, value creation, people and organisation, tax, sustainability reporting, deals, business recovery services, legal and compliance.

Message from our leadership

Marcus Lam

Executive Chairman, PwC Singapore

Eng Beng Choo

Assurance Leader, PwC Singapore

Today, companies are judged far beyond their financial outcomes. Aspects such as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and cybersecurity have become foundational to any company’s performance, staff loyalty, and overall enterprise value. This new paradigm means that while our PwC purpose is more relevant than ever before, being both an auditor and a PwC professional today has evolved into something different, and more.

Future auditors will need a broader skill set that extends beyond financial reporting to include areas like digital trust, cyber, data security, and ESG, among others. Our vision is to enable the future of audit to improve audit quality and inspire the next generation of auditors and businesses. We have developed significant capabilities in ESG, have been continuously upskilling our people to support our clients in their sustainability transformation and reporting journeys – helping to engender greater trust in the market and society. You can expect to see more from us in the ESG reporting and assurance front in the coming year.

Our promise and commitment

Quality

Our firm’s monitoring includes an ongoing assessment aimed at evaluating whether the policies and procedures that constitute our System of Quality Management (SoQM), are designed appropriately and operating effectively to provide reasonable assurance that our audit, non-audit assurance and related services engagements are performed in compliance with laws, regulations and professional standards.

Our Assurance Quality Indicators (AQIs) supports our Assurance team in identifying potential quality risks early. By using predictive metrics, we aim to foresee quality issues as part of our Quality Management for Service Excellence (QMSE). AQIs, along with other performance measures, serve as essential tools for continuous monitoring and improvement of our SoQM. These include the quality indicators prescribed by the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) under its AQI Disclosure Framework.

Our Risk and Quality (R&Q) team, in collaboration with the Assurance leadership team, regularly reviews the firm's AQIs. This year, we have introduced three new categories of quality factors: ethical requirements, SoQM effectiveness, and technical resources. Altogether, we now track 11 quality factors, including independence, support, project management, direction and supervision, engagement performance, and availability, skills, and motivation of our people.

Real-Time Assurance (RTA) programme offers preventative monitoring to coach and support engagement teams in completing the 'right work' during the audit. Experienced practice and R&Q professionals, along with seasoned directors and partners, conduct reviews as jobs progress. Thematic observations are shared with the practice through R&Q communication channels and training modules where appropriate.

Our Recognition and Accountability Framework (RAF) reinforces quality across all aspects of our strategy, from client services to fostering a collaborative work environment. The RAF sets clear expectations for quality behaviours and outcomes, holding Partners and Engagement Leaders accountable. It focuses on the following key elements:

Quality outcomes: Transparent measurement to ensure alignment with professional and PwC standards.
Behaviours: Defined expectations for behaviours that support a commitment to quality, the right tone from the top, and strong engagement with quality objectives.
Interventions/recognition: Programmes to promote and reinforce positive behaviours, fostering a culture of quality.
Consequences/rewards: Financial and non-financial consequences/incentives to align behaviours and outcomes with quality objectives.

Root Cause Analysis identifies potential factors contributing to our firm’s audit quality, allowing us to take actions for continuous improvement. It helps us understand what our findings reveal about our SoQM and how our firm can create an effective environment for engagement teams to deliver quality audits.

Additionally, we examine quality findings from various sources, including ongoing monitoring and network inspection of SoQM, assurance engagements (with and without deficiencies identified through internal and external inspections), the Global People Survey, and financial statement restatements and accounting errors, to identify possible distinctions and learning opportunities.

People

To enforce a culture of trust and integrity, and deliver the sustained outcomes that we promise to the world, we have introduced our Evolved PwC Professional framework.

It is a comprehensive update to how we define and measure our performance and professional growth at PwC. It provides the framework and encompasses the behaviours that underpin how we deliver on our purpose, and strategy, and live our values in every interaction, every day.

It is made up of two dimensions - Trusted Leadership and Distinctive Outcomes.

Trusted Leadership enables us to deliver for ourselves, our clients and the communities in which we serve. We need to unlearn what we’ve always known and develop new behaviours that prioritise building trust and delivering sustained outcomes. We’ll need to be courageous when things are tough. We’ll need to be objective and honest. We’ll need to challenge our assumptions and show up differently, with new skills, in times of change. It is not only a mindset shift, but a set of behaviours that prioritise the way we achieve outcomes.

Distinctive Outcomes is a set of behaviours that enables us to bring our collective expertise, collaboration and inclusiveness to our stakeholders. These behaviours are rooted in our commitment to excellence and are a result of challenging old assumptions and taking on new opportunities. We take pride in our responsibility to deliver outcomes rooted in our heritage of quality and integrity. After all, our outcomes are only distinctive if they inspire, add value, meaning and purpose, and can be trusted. Such outcomes are not just deliverables, they’re the behaviours that guide us to be the very best at what we do.

Technology

As part of our commitment to building trust and delivering sustained outcomes, the PwC network is investing in a multi-year effort to deliver a new global audit platform to power our next generation audit (NGA).

Examples of our audit tools:

A tool that utilises cutting-edge machine learning and automation technology to streamline testing over the mathematical accuracy, checking of prior year comparatives and internal consistency of financial statement documents.

Assisted Disclosure Checking is a solution designed to help users seamlessly align disclosure requirements (checklist) with disclosures in the entity's financial statements. This includes both primary statements and the associated footnotes.

A cloud-based audit tool, built to simplify and automate audit processes. DT extracts data from various source documents, aggregates the data in a consistent format in the data hub, and transforms it into valuable information through a designed framework and tailored workflows. Testing results are generated with just a few clicks. With the information in the data hub, DT is able to deliver benchmarking, compliance monitoring and management reporting functions.

An end-to-end solution for inventory count observations. Count enables engagement teams to create and manage count procedures, while counters can record results directly on their mobile devices or tablets. Final results can be seamlessly exported into Aura.

Video

Here to listen: PwC's Next Generation Audit

From the beginning, great auditing has always been about great listening. Learn more about PwC's Next Generation Audit journey, which is anchored in listening and building trust.