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22 February 2019

Gettin’ Vizzy With It - Where to Start with Data & Analytics

By Will Dupre. Rewind about three years and I’d never heard of Tableau, or Alteryx, or for that matter, Power BI. A colleague dropped out of a data visualisation training course being run by PwC, and nominated me to go in his place. If I reflect on my where my career is now, I’d say this unintentional opportunity was the start to my own career disruption. This internal two day face-to-face training (and the six week “sprint” that followed) was a great experience, and I’ve not looked back. The course focussed on Tableau and was in part delivered by Tableau consultants. Because of this training, my interest was very much piqued to begin to pursue work in the data and analytics field.

20 December 2018

Women Who Code visit PwC

By Jona Duka, Senior Associate. In November, we were delighted to have the opportunity to host an event for Women Who Code at our Edinburgh office.

05 December 2018

Data specialists of the future

By Nainsi McKernan, PwC Data and Analytics Senior Associate Technology is extremely important to our rapidly changing business and the world we live in. Our clients’ needs are constantly changing with demand for deep technical expertise in Data and Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). With this in mind, and in order to build the best workforce possible for the future, we’ve partnered with two Scottish Universities, the University of Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews, to build a new approach to University studying. In September, we welcomed our first Data Science Graduate Apprenticeship to help support client requirements and help develop the leading Data and AI specialists of the future.

14 November 2018

Helping advance smart cities

The development of smart cities – enabled, powered and integrated by digital technologies – is set to be one of the crowning achievements of societies worldwide in the 21st century. Already, the everyday lives of people living in countless cities are being made easier, more fulfilling and more secure by the services enabled by technologies. This evolution will likely only continue to expand.

02 November 2018

PwC's senior women in data dinner

By Tayyaba Arif and Lola Ladejobi. According to the Office of National Statistics, over 70% of women aged 16–64 are employed, increasing from slightly over half (53%) in 1971. Of those working women, only 22% are in senior leadership roles – a glance around the room would tell you that there’s even less in data-focused roles.

03 October 2018

Increase compliance by listening to the story your corporate data is telling you

By Harshad Kanchan. In our last insurance blog we discussed why data engineers could be the catalyst your business needs. In this one we venture into the area of analytics performed by data engineers, business analysts and auditors in the internal audit and compliance functions.

11 September 2018

Blockchain: The safest place for our data

By Louise Broderick, Global Blockchain Manager. Of all the conceivable uses of blockchain, its potential in securely managing, storing and sharing data is, I would say one of the most exciting of all. At its core, blockchain enables the sharing of data across boundaries.

22 August 2018

Drones: It’s all about the data

By Stephen Mills. The latest Instagram fad, according to a recent report, is to take a selfie (preferably while somewhere exotic on holiday) from a drone. Inevitably it comes with its own hashtag – #instadrone.

15 August 2018

How Data & Analytics tools can improve your tax function

By Tom Harrold. Tax functions are under pressure to become more efficient and aligned with the business, whilst also handling greater amounts of information. All against the backdrop of increasingly complex regimes. Could data and analytics provide a solution?

01 August 2018

Financial crime: Sanctions screening and the quirks of language

By Scott Samme and Jeremy Davey. Money launderers are, by definition, a devious bunch. They quickly learn the rules that banks set to detect suspicious transactions, and adapt.

10 July 2018

Why the role of Data Engineer could be the catalyst your business needs

By Sam Jones and Timothy Harrison. In our last blog we discussed how the combination of increased data availability and customer expectations was driving the opportunity for increasingly personalised policies. The insurance industry has been built on data foundations with underwriting, claims and reserving all creating data and pertaining processes which are enhanced through the use of data.

02 July 2018

Regulatory technology insights

By Leigh Bates and Aysegul Kazdal. We were recently invited by one of our Banking clients to participate in a panel discussion at their annual Fintech innovation week. We shared views on emerging technologies, the impact they’ve had on operations and compliance, and how they’re helping the sector provide valuable services to customers.

12 June 2018

The role of analytics in wellbeing

By Jo Salter, Director. Back in the analogue days, annual appraisals were the main tool organisations used to find out how their employees were feeling. Appraisals could be a hit-and-miss affair for many reasons – not least that the appraisal process itself is enough to put some people in a bad mood.

05 June 2018

Financial crime: Four essential rules for effective transaction monitoring

By Jeremy Davey and Scott Samme Money launderers are, by definition, a devious bunch. They quickly learn the rules that banks set to detect suspicious transactions, and adapt. They are, in other words, dynamic – so transaction monitoring should be equally so. In our previous blog we talked about the problems with many legacy transaction monitoring (TM) systems, which tend to be rules-based. That’s not to say that rules-based systems are obsolete; but in the complex world of global finance, they’re not enough on their own. If banks are to efficiently root out complex illegal trades they need to know far more about the connections between parties to transactions. Fortunately, advanced technology and analytics allow us to do this.

29 May 2018

When automated pricing becomes collusion

By David Geere Machine learning systems are not unlike raising a particularly brilliant child – they could move ahead and gain knowledge at speed, but you need to give them guidance and an ethical framework or they could break through lines that adults wouldn’t cross. The possibility of automated collusion is one of those lines. As I’ve written previously, pricing is one of the most important issues for any business and Data and Analytics is bringing huge advantages to companies in making pricing decisions. Competition is tough in every sector, and companies are understandably keen to get the best prices for their goods and services

21 May 2018

Connecting with senior females in data

By Cathy Wilks For a long time we’ve thought about how do we really connect with more like-minded female technologists who all share the same passion for data, analytics and emerging technology. There are many events that we could, and often do attend, however, as senior females in data, we really want to understand how we can make a difference. As two of the female data leaders at PwC, last month we hosted the first gathering for ‘female leaders in data’ in our offices at Embankment Place. We recognise how important it is to form support networks, particularly with female peers, given there are fewer women in senior technology roles.

14 May 2018

Blockchain, a solution to securing and managing personal data?

By Jeff Handler and Leigh Bates It’s no secret that the amount of personal data being collected and processed is rapidly increasing. It’s estimated that over 20% of all of the world’s data has been collected in just the last couple of years, and that this will continue to increase exponentially moving forward.

09 May 2018

Transaction monitoring: Why segments and thresholds are never enough

By Scott Samme and Jeremy Davey In our last blog we talked about the difficulties banks face with transaction monitoring (TM) for anti money laundering (AML) purposes. Rapid developments in data analytics and machine learning will make TM far more efficient in the very near future – but banks need to get their existing systems in order first.

02 May 2018

Managing AI and machine learning model risk - PwC’s AI Quality Assurance Framework

By Sudeshna Sen and Aldous Birchall Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are increasingly touching our lives every day through medicine, social media and banking. At PwC, we’ve delivered several AI solutions that provide augmented decision making to help our clients act with speed and precision at scale.

16 April 2018

Personalised Policies

By Sam Jones The insurance sector has always been known for being data-driven, in fact, some of the most early data analytics was with actuaries and insurance underwriters. The new challenges we face today is the sheer volume and variety of data which is increasing exponentially; a wealth of data is being generated by the increasing number of devices we interact with on a daily basis – from our mobile phones to the Internet of Things (IoT) - all of which provide high volume, mix-structured information on a real-time basis.

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