Investigations and disputes

We support our clients in investigating accounting issues or financial irregularities whether they have arisen through fraud, economic crime or genuine errors. This includes investigating allegations of misstated financial information, fraud, and asset misappropriation, as well as investigating the impact of historic manual or system-related accounting errors.

Organisations regularly fall under the scrutiny of regulators, the public, and other key stakeholders. In many cases, there is a need to independently and robustly interrogate the facts to respond accurately and quickly. Operating as a trusted partner, our investigations demonstrate commitment to the identification of the facts alongside effective and impartial remedial actions.

As a crisis unfolds, it is important for organisations to understand if they have the capacity, technology and resilience to ensure continuation of business-critical operations.

We support organisations to prepare, respond and emerge stronger from a wide range of crisis situations. This can include developing and implementing large scale command and control structures to prepare/respond to a crisis, scenario planning, crisis leadership, communications and operational support. This is all underpinned by data discovery, capture and analytics capability to drive decision making that will stand up to future scrutiny.

As governments worldwide tighten regulations, organisations face an ever-growing regulatory burden, leading to an increasing number of information requests from regulators. It is critical that organisations respond to these requests rapidly and that information is gathered in a forensic manner that will stand up to scrutiny.

Our team of investigators and eDiscovery experts is equipped to support clients and their external legal counsel in gathering all necessary data and responding to requests for information from regulatory bodies.

Where a company is divesting or carving out a part of its business, it is critical to understand the presence of sensitive data before separating and handing it over to the buyer. Often, this data is held across a variety of servers and disparate systems, which can make it challenging to pinpoint.

Organisations need assistance in identifying this data that contains sensitive elements, for greater visibility, so they are equipped to make informed decisions when separating the data. We can help clients discover and classify their sensitive data using technology, so it can be handled appropriately when sharing it or migrating it to other parties. We are able to liaise with IT on both sides of the transaction to help deliver the data to the buyer.

eDiscovery and Managed Review services are essential in today's legal landscape due to the exponential growth of digital data in the likes of complex litigation and investigations. Our cost-effective technology solutions allows us offer flexible pricing models to process a multitude of data from email to laptop and mobiles devices imaging.

Our teams can include onshore and offshore review teams, handle the entire review process, from the initial document examination to quality control and project management, allowing clients to focus on the legal aspects of their cases.

These services enhance efficiency and ensure that the vast amount of data is managed and categorized effectively, helping legal professionals meet critical discovery needs.

Recent years have seen a huge increase in the number of organisations falling victim to data breach incidents - be they as a result of a cyber incident or a simple laps in controls. This, coupled with the introduction of ever more data privacy legislation, has caused a significant problem in terms of how organisations react when such incidents occur.

Our breach response offering helps clients to quickly triage the data that has been exfiltrated, and quantify the risk and harms to individuals. Utilising a combination of specialist technology, artificial intelligence and Human in the Loop (“HiL”) this data is analysed to identify and extract sensitive information, such as Personally Identifiable Information ("PII"), so that the appropriate notification actions can be taken.

We help clients understand what data they store, where it is and who owns or has access to it.

Using technology we can provide valuable insights into the extent of the data retained by a business and the risk it poses to the organisation through scanning their systems and devices and labelling data of interest.

This is particularly important when organisations are improving their data governance and compliance, preparing for and managing the associated risks of a potential data breach or where organisations wish to reduce the data footprint, often as part value added savings. Equally, it is used to improve the quality of data identified for training Artificial Intelligence models.

Market wide scandals such as competition disputes and ESG related scandals can result in class action lawsuits. Our Disputes and eDiscovery teams can support law firms and clients from the outset by identifying necessary documentation to support (or respond to) a potential claim through to preparing quantification of damages and where necessary providing expert reports or testimony as part of court or a tribunal.

Where there is a mass volume of claims, we can also provide claims management solutions with the use of innovative technology and data analytics to confidently and appropriately deal with claims portfolios.

We provide independent assistance in managing high value and complex insurance claims, helping clients capture, present and quantify losses and additional expenses recoverable under insurance policies in a variety of scenarios across a range of industries. We are also able to draw upon PwC's broad geographical and industry expertise, as required, to ensure that our assessments address all of the necessary issues in any claim.

Our team advises clients, along with their internal and external counsel on the financial, accounting, and valuation aspects of claims – whether they are preparing for a claim, making a claim or responding to one. We support at all stages of a claim, from the initial assessment of loss to acting as an expert witness in litigation or arbitration, articulating complex, technical accounting issues with clarity. Our team includes globally recognised expert witnesses who work closely with other parts of our firm to ensure that each case receives the expertise needed to address the issues at hand.