John Parkhouse, CEO of PwC Luxembourg commented on the performance:

At PwC Luxembourg, our vision is to seek to “Lead in changing times for our Clients, our People and Society.” In addition to an extremely successful financial year at PwC Luxembourg, with 10.2% growth across the business lines, we have focussed on preparing our firm and our people for the needs of the future.  Indeed, for a couple of years now, we have undertaken a number of initiatives in order to transform our business and therefore improve the experience of our clients, the people who work with us and for us and of society at large. That for us is the very definition of leadership.”

“This ongoing transformation addresses the absolute reality that the world is changing dramatically with far reaching political, economic and social consequences. We have identified five megatrends – a shift in global economic power, demographic shifts, accelerating urbanisation, a rise in technology, climate change and resource scarcity – that are spearheading the change. The nature of our business is changing rapidly as a result and the biggest impact for us and for our clients is coming from technology and talent. We are investing heavily in digital solutions that will make a 

concrete difference. Indeed, our strategy of investing in technology, quality, innovative new services and top talent continues to drive our success across all our lines of business”

Technology-enabled for the needs of our clients and our people

In recent years, PwC has invested in developing state-of-the-art capabilities to serve client technology needs, focussing on areas such as AI (Artificial Intelligence) RPA (Robotic Process Automation), Blockchain and Smart Identification, which will ensure that our services remain at the forefront of our client needs. The launch of our Experience Center in February of this year is indicative of how we are embedding such change across all that we do.  In addition, within one year PwC, at global level, will become the first non-technology firm of any size to become fully cloud enabled as we introduce Workday, Google and Salesforce internally to enhance our People experience, their tools and their capabilities to ready them to serve the client needs of the future.  

Rima Adas, Deputy CEO and Financial Services Leader, said:

“One of the dominant factors creating enormous impact in our personal and professional lives is technology. Strategically, PwC is aiming to lead the way into this new “world order”. Being technology enabled is changing the way we work, making us more efficient and unlocking added-value for our clients. However, technology alone can’t unlock economic value, what is also essential is the human element.”

Focus on our people: 

In the 20 years of PwC Luxembourg’s existence in its present form, the firm has grown from 500 people to 2,745 as of June 30, 2018.  The success of Luxembourg in the global economy was a major factor in driving this growth. PwC in turn made a significant societal impact and continued to contribute to the Grand Duchy’s phenomenal success story, by attracting to Luxembourg, and then developing, over 10,000 highly educated and talented individuals of whom the majority have remained here in the country either with us or with other stakeholders. In doing so, our firm has helped to boost the unique diversity of Luxembourg’s highly skilled, multinational and multilingual work force and contributed to the country’s phenomenal growth story.  

This digital revolution is impacting the way we work, the evolution of our headcount and the number of people and types of talent profiles that we are looking for. As noted in our 2018 CEO report, one of the single biggest challenges to CEOs today is talent and this trend will continue.  Where to find people with the right skills, how to retain them and – critically today – how to develop them in such a way that they are fit for the future; a future of continuous change and disruption.

Innovation that extends out to the society in which we live and operate.

A key priority for PwC remains the evolution of our Managed Services proposition.  Increasingly, our clients need to focus on their core business and they are turning to firms like PwC to deliver on their ongoing regulatory and compliance obligations. With nearly 500 people currently delivering on client needs in this space - combining secure, reliable and state of the art delivery with technical and business expertise - we are extremely focussed on continuing to evolve the technology and talent needs specific to this business to serve this rapidly growing client demand. Our expertise in this space also means we are increasingly serving clients not only based in Luxembourg but from numerous other jurisdictions both across the EU and beyond.

We are proud to have launched our Experience Centre, in February 2018.  Our Experience Center is more than just a creative space. With a team of specialists, we deliver our iterative methodology combining BXT (Business, Experience and Technology) with a specifically designed and purpose-built 385 square meter space that to date has welcomed nearly 1300 clients and 2300 PwC team members.

More recently, the Luxembourg Government has announced the Digital Skills Bridge initiative combining strategic workforce planning with specialist training/upskilling solutions to provide a pro-active mechanism to ready the workforce of today to solve the needs of Luxembourg tomorrow. PwC Luxembourg worked closely with the government to develop this and our people are now helping its deployment across 15 companies here in Luxembourg as well as adopting the approach to our own workforce needs.  We have also begun discussions across a number of other territories at senior government and business levels as we seek to leverage this unique Luxembourg built solution more broadly across society.

Assurance of the Future

In the face of the geopolitical shifts, regulatory pressure and public scrutiny, the world in which PwC operates is transforming at an unprecedented rate, as is technology, disrupting industries and making us rethink the value we need to bring. In this volatile environment, where trust in businesses and governments is declining, the word and the function of “assurance” takes on its full meaning: removing doubt and rebuilding confidence among stakeholders.

Today, assurance services should go far beyond the traditional audit of financial statements. Breakthroughs in data analytics, artificial intelligence and in Blockchain technology mean our clients need expert advice to help them manage new risks. With increasing expectations from our stakeholders, we have been constantly reimagining our services and trying to adapt them to meet the needs of our clients. We realise that, alongside established methods of assurance, we need to come up with new ways of providing confidence to our clients.

Our Risk Assurance (RA) team is doing just that: providing trust over risks arising from technological advancements, automation and new regulations. We believe RA is a major catalyst towards assurance of the future. It plays a key role in keeping us ahead of the changes in our clients’ business environment by being quicker, bringing more value to our clients and expanding to new and more significant forms of assurance.

John Parkhouse said:

“The assurance needs of our clients in the future will be dramatically different to what they are today and we are working to ensure the value that we bring across assurance meets those future needs.”

Future of Tax

Our firm has made numerous innovations to effectively cope with increasing tax advisory and compliance requirements resulting notably from EU’s upcoming new legislation that aims primarily to strengthen tax transparency and fight against aggressive tax planning, such as the mandatory disclosure for intermediaries (DAC6), exchange of rulings, the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD) etc. A continuous goal of our firm is to reduce repetitive and time-consuming administrative work to help all our people gain in productivity and be able to focus on delivering more value to our stakeholders.

Wim Piot, Tax Leader at PwC Luxembourg, said:

“At PwC Luxembourg, our strength lies in our thorough functional knowledge, comprehensive technical expertise and extensive industry experience. Instead of shying away from the waves of transformation, we are relying on these time-tested strengths to make the tax function a true value-added partner within our organisation and for our stakeholders.

To this end, a recent innovation of which we are very proud is the recently established Tax Policy Panel. This will help our clients in making the right decision in tax matters, taking into consideration all the risks involved in terms of technical aspects, economics, commercial, reputation and broader stakeholder context.”

This is our second year of reporting under GRI standards which is a rigorous framework requiring us to identify, measure and report on those aspects that are material to our development as a truly sustainable business that is purpose led and values driven. Many of our actions align to the UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), such as gender equality and pay equity, quality education, good health and well-being. These actions are core to the long-term sustainable success of our firm.

John Parkhouse concluded:

“This path remains an ongoing challenge.  In some areas, we have improved significantly, while in others we have not progressed as we would have wished. We understand that we are on a long-term journey and that this transformation will only work if we are capable of looking honestly at ourselves. It is for this reason that we evolved our reporting this year to include other measures including how the broader society perceives us by participating in an independent survey, the results of which you can read in this report as well as a pay equity review.

We believe that business likes ours not only have the power, but also the duty, to play an active role in making our world change for the better. These are not lofty add-on goals but integral to everything we do and they are key to our success and sustainability as a firm.”

The report “Leading in Changing Times” is available on the PwC Luxembourg website.