PwC Risk and Response

Managing risk in an increasingly uncertain world

We’re living in a fast-changing and increasingly complex environment. Businesses are feeling more and more vulnerable to the dangers of cybercrime, systemic failure, fraud, corruption, regulatory investigation and the daunting prospect of costly remediation.

It’s time to turn risk into an opportunity and to take preventative measures to help you avoid the uncertainty that inhibits opportunity. If a crisis does occur, we identify the source of the problem, minimise the cost and pain, and then rebuild trust. We install more effective systems to preclude the likelihood of recurrence.

Our strategy is to ensure that the identification of risk is an opportunity to prepare, respond and emerge stronger.

Avoid disruption and focus on core business

Business leaders have always had to grapple with complex challenges. In the last few years, we’ve seen global shifts such as the rise of new technology, swift political changes, and the collapse of old systems spark shockwaves that are reshaping once-stable industries.

Why your cyber incident response plan matters now

Taking your cyber incident response plan seriously can help you bounce back from attacks faster and recalibrate your customer relationships in the process.

When it comes to the problems that plague modern-day businesses, it’s hard to overestimate the magnitude of cybercrime. Over the last few years, one-off threats involving Trojan viruses and instantly detectable phishing scams have morphed into full-blown attacks mounted by professional cybercriminals—often, with worldwide teams at their disposal. In March 2019, the World Economic Forum reported that more than 4.5 billion records were breached in the first half of 2018 and that cybercriminals were employing tactics that are more sophisticated and globally scalable, using advanced phishing kits and conducting more attacks via smartphone.

Is culture entwined with conduct?

Corporate Australia has experienced something of a watershed moment over the last twelve months. The Royal Commission has identified systemic problems at the heart of many of Australia’s financial services (FS) organisations — companies whose activities ripple through everything from the national economy and major industries to the financial wellbeing of individual businesses and families. The Commission has unearthed a spectrum of issues that range from compliance breaches and fraudulent conduct to poor financial advice and ethically questionable practices.

Managing Risk in the Scramble for Identity Data

Last year, Australian National University found itself on the wrong side of a cybersecurity debacle when Chinese hackers infiltrated its website, putting sensitive national security data at risk.

According to a July 2018 ABC report, holes in the university’s IT security strategy had left the organisation vulnerable to attack from cyber criminals. But the case was also part of a pattern of Australian organisations who’ve neglected the role that identity and access management — a set of attributes or traits that confirms the legitimacy of a user’s digital credentials — can play when it comes to safeguarding their organisation from external threat.

From defective, to detection: How to improve your TM system

The detection of suspicious activity through effective Transaction Monitoring (TM) systems is a key control in the management of money laundering and terrorism financing (ML/TF) risk.

The role of the Executive in Uncertain Times

Rethinking Remediation

Remediation is often considered time-consuming and labour-intensive. But for savvy businesses, it’s also a compelling opportunity to demonstrate trust and transparency and put customer outcomes first.

Risk Resilience

The accelerating pace of change is creating insecurity, uncertainty and risk. Our experience and expertise can help build the resilience that acts as your organisation’s immune system – protecting you from the unexpected and ensuring a speedy recovery if problems occur.

Financial Crime

Criminals prey on systemic failure – the lack of appropriate controls to detect and thwart their activities. We bring the necessary expertise to help you respond to financial crime and then rebuild trust by remediating deficiencies and enhancing operating models.

Regulatory Investigation

In this complex regulatory environment, businesses are unwittingly vulnerable to criminal sanctions and civil penalties. Our dedicated team can help you respond to investigation and minimise your costs. We’ll ensure you emerge with better systems and better relationships with regulators.

Fraud and corruption

Criminal investigation requires speed of response and a particular mindset – we combine behavioural analysis, creative thinking and actionable intelligence to discover the extent of the fraud, identify the perpetrators, recover losses and then rebuild trust and confidence through clear communication.

Remediation centres

We’ve developed the capability to remediate and operate, financial crime compliance processes at scale and a lower cost point for our Clients with our dedicated Financial Crime Unit facility in Manila.

Cyber security

With the continuing rise of cybercrime, we help identify vulnerabilities so that you can protect yourself more effectively. Should a breach occur, we’ll investigate, remediate and get you back to ‘business as usual’ with the minimum of disruption.

Remediation Centres

We know that the fight against financial crime is often considered time-consuming and labour-intensive. In order to help our clients, we've developed the capability to remediate and operate financial crime compliance processes at scale and a lower cost point with our dedicated Financial Crime Unit facility in Manila.

Taking a human-centred approach to risk

Modern-day crisis management isn’t exclusively about mitigating risk and communicating promptly with stakeholders. It’s also about acknowledging that the impact of unforeseen circumstances can reverberate beyond business-as-usual to take a serious human toll.

At PwC, we understand that any remediation process or attempt to build risk resilience must address the emotional damage a crisis can wreak on a company, alongside issues around logistics and reputation. For a major waste-management company that was asked to ground its fleet of trucks in the wake of a catastrophic accident, PwC empowered an empathetic and emotionally intelligent approach to leadership while drawing on our deep knowledge of forensic risk and safety systems and our globally renowned crisis methodology.

By working in tandem with the regulator as well as the organisation, we pooled collective strengths to create a meaningful system for the risk response process. Our joint effort sent a consistent message to employees and board members and imbued stakeholders with confidence.

This clear-eyed series of actions enabled a calm and methodical process that saw trucks return to the road and quickly identified and managed potential issues and bottlenecks. This set the stage for a risk outlook that prioritised people over profits. It also helped the business bounce back from crisis stronger, equipped with tools to tackle challenges in the future.

Turning compliance into competitive advantage

Compliance can be complicated. Businesses in highly regulated industries know that it takes serious investment and near-constant vigilance to stay abreast of reporting requirements. Unfortunately, failure to invest in robust regulatory processes can risk leaving companies vulnerable to breaches. These can destroy credibility, create barriers within an organisation and attract crippling fines.

At PwC, we understand that compliance isn’t an afterthought. It’s a critical function that can impact everything from strategy and operations to future growth. We worked closely with a major global gaming organisation to significantly uplift their anti-money laundering (AML) program and procedures, which in turn sparked an uplift in compliance across their business. We also helped incorporate risk assessment measures in their processes that were aimed at proactively detecting — and mitigating — future issues.

By empowering the organisation to take a best-in-class approach to compliance, rather than the usual ‘tick the box’ approach, we helped them regain the trust of regulators around the world. We also turned risk resilience into a competitive advantage, creating the strongest position for achieving growth ambitions in the process.

Turning anxiety into opportunity

Today, change is the only constant. From technological shifts to environmental evolution, the ability to manage flux has become as central to business success as vision and strategy. Unfortunately, this reality can see many organisations freeze with indecision — rather than harnessing the many possibilities that could arise.

PwC understands that inaction isn’t an option when it comes to our fast-moving world. For a leading industrial products company, we tapped into our multidisciplinary team of experts and mapped out future scenarios associated with climate change. We then explored the risks and the opportunities that could help transform future obstacles into avenues for growth and innovation.

Crucially, we co-created our approach, collaborating closely at every stage of the journey, managing stakeholders and identifying potential outcomes.

We helped the organisation champion a climate change strategy that’s proactive rather than reactive and absorbs uncertainty as part of the process. Working together, we turned a root of present-day anxiety into the seeds of future advantage.

Championing a bold approach to identity management

Managing digital identity is a complex business. A failure to govern the levels of access and privilege granted to employees across an organisation can create the risk of data leaks. It can also open the door to security breaches that can threaten an organisation’s credibility and ultimately hurt bottom lines.

PwC understands that digital identity management isn’t just a matter of making sure an employees’ access to platforms, systems, and applications lines up with their roles and responsibilities. It’s a moving target that impacts everything from employee onboarding and internal security to the ability to respond quickly to change.

A partnership with a major financial services organization saw PwC draw on our global delivery model as well as agile, DevOps and automation practices. Through this joint effort, we built on and future-proofed the company’s robust identity management capability — a move which fine-tuned security, improved efficiency and unlocked hidden pockets of value across the company. We transformed a security risk into an organisational asset built around clarity and agility — one that empowers the company to consolidate existing skills and react swiftly to future challenges. The collaboration also helped the organisation seamlessly manage its diverse workforce and achieve its strategic aims with aplomb.

Rethinking the fallout from fraud

In the modern-day organisation, honesty and transparency aren’t just value statements. They’re essential qualities that are intrinsic to building customer relationships and cultivating trust. That’s why the detection of fraud — from the non-disclosure of gifts to illicit payments — can do irrevocable damage to a company’s reputation, a fact exacerbated by the 24-hour news cycle. It can also inadvertently create patterns of behaviour that negatively impact workplace culture.

At PwC, we understand that although fraud may stem from the actions of one or two individuals, its consequences are widespread. For a major government organisation, we combined a deep knowledge of forensic accounting and insights from a multidisciplinary team of experts to uncover a serious instance of corruption and fraud — one that was costing money and risked hurting the company’s hard-won public credibility. Our access to best-in-class fraud detection technology also helped deliver the real-world evidence that’s key to the resolution of criminal investigations.

This partnership empowered the company to create new policies, procedures and systems that put values such as ethics, accountability and transparency front and centre, saving it significant costs going forward. We helped the organisation regain the confidence of the public and emerge from this crisis, clear-eyed and fit to tackle future challenges as they arise.