Transparency Report 2024 - Andy Hammond transcript

At PwC we're committed to a culture of quality and excellence that is core to our purpose of building trust in society and solving important problems.

I joined the audit profession so that I could make a meaningful contribution to building confidence in business, and that's why I'm so proud of our work in Audit.

Our role as auditors is to build trust in information that drives the capital markets - trust in its accuracy, its reliability, and its consistency. The world is changing at pace, and with this change, the needs and expectations of investors and wider stakeholders continue to evolve. In this complex environment, the work we do is more important than ever.

It’s part of our public interest commitment to consistently perform quality audits and be transparent about our system of quality management. This Report explains how the firm and audit practice is governed, as well as providing more detail on our approach to quality, independence, the challenges we face and how we are responding to them.

Our audit culture, people, advanced technology and governance all have a critical role to play in delivering consistently high quality audits. Culture is really important to me and, whilst we're proud of the steps we've made in recent years, it's important we recognise that culture needs to be continuously reinforced and prioritised. This includes creating an inclusive working environment where everyone feels like they belong and can fulfil their potential.

We remain focused on providing robust and independent assurance across financial and non-financial information in the public interest. As the demand for assurance over non-financial information continues to grow in areas such as ESG, controls and AI, we will continue to engage with the investor community, Audit Committee Chairs and wider stakeholders. Our people are specialists, with deep industry knowledge and expertise, and ensuring our teams are made up of the right people with the right skills is also crucial to achieving high quality.

We will continue to invest in our people, culture, skills and technologies to deliver our vision for the audit of the future that is human-led, tech-powered and consistently focused on striving for the highest levels of quality.