Marissa Thomas video transcript

Part 1 - Our performance in FY22

Looking back over the past year it’s hard to comprehend just how much change and disruption we’ve lived through. The last 12 months has been defined by a gradual reopening of the economy as pandemic lockdowns have come to an end, the growth of a new hybrid model of working, major geopolitical conflict and an emerging cost of living crisis. 

I’m so proud of the resilience of our people in not only adapting to all of this change but also in the way they’ve helped drive our business forward with an unrelenting focus on clients and quality.

Despite this challenging backdrop, our performance has been strong, spurred on by private sector demand, particularly in Financial Services and Industrial Manufacturing industries. The benefits of a strong commercial performance go beyond who we are as a business. This year alone, for example, our total tax contribution to the HMRC, from across our UK business, rose to over £1.5 billion. 

We’ve seen double digit revenue growth - 12% to just over £5bn - with good levels of activity across all of our major services, led by consulting and an active deals market. The consulting growth trend has been felt even more strongly in our Middle East business.

In April, the successful sale of our Global Mobility business - now known as Vialto Partners - was testament to the scale of our brand, quality of people and our client reach. 

Part 2 - Investing in our business

The strength of our balance sheet left us in a position to be able to invest in our business, our clients and our people. 

In June we unveiled the biggest investment in UK pay in the past 10 years. This is while we’ve been building a flexible model, a hybrid of home and office working for our people. 

PwC wants to be known as the best hybrid working organisation in the market - we want our teams to have all of the resources they need to bring their best to every client engagement. 

To this end we have invested in the right technology to support home-working, alongside significant upgrades in the quality of our office environments, making them more flexible, welcoming and environmentally friendly.

We’ve also been making investments in capabilities that support our clients with their challenges and opportunities for growth in areas such as net zero, supply chain, cloud engineering and technology alliances. The build out of our Execution Managed Services, our offering to help clients manage a wide-range of business processes more effectively, has been a particular success story and an area of growth that complements our very valuable core service offerings. 

Part 3 - Looking forward

We have ambitious growth targets for FY23 which are driven by our client needs and which will offer us opportunities to both change what we do and how we do it. And we will continue to be a responsible business by investing in technology, quality, our people and strategic priorities including our next generation audit approach. 

We intend to meet our Net Zero commitments by 2030. All our buildings are now powered by renewable energy sources and we recognise there is more to do.

We know that the last two years have seen dramatic drops in our carbon emissions but with the return to face-to-face meetings our emissions are inevitably starting to rise again - so we are reviewing our policies to ensure that our business travel is considered, thoughtful and aligned to client needs, and does not return to pre-pandemic levels. 

I believe this balanced approach will allow us to see sustainable growth as a responsible employer that invests in jobs and skills in the communities in which we live and work.