PwC - Financial Services Advisory - Capital Markets Basically Just Risk & Compliance?
Hey all,
Recently was looking into a role with PwC in the Financial Services Advisory practice & Banking and Capital Markets industry.
I come from a lending background and my question is pretty simple - is Financial Services Advisory in PwC’s Capital Markets group a true “advisory” role or is it one of those gigs that’s basically just compliance/assurance/regulatory work with a dressed up name, for financial clients?
Pro Tip: Every job at PwC sucks. The only true consulting gigs are if you're at Strategy&, the rest are just outsourced back office roles.
I know a lot of people like to diss the big 4, but the reality is quite different to what some posted above.
It's true that a lot of roles in audit and tax can be quite repetitive/boring. And those jobs are the ones most people want to leave. However, in advisory, the turnover is lower, with most people leaving because of lower pay (compared to what the make somewhere else) rather than how dreadful the job is.
I worked in advisory in Europe and Asia for a Big 4. I was on the transaction side, and worked on some of the largest PE deals in the region (not necessarily as M&A, but also due diligence, valuation, IPO advice). In the US, Big 4 has a smaller footprint due to competition from a lot of banks, boutiques, MM firms etc. In Europe and Asia, corporate finance in big 4 tends to do close to the largest number of deals (MM generally), getting to the top on volume, but not on value.
So advisory is not audit-related consulting, nor outsourced back office. But it's a big business unit, so some roles might do more compliance type work, while others are more like strategy/operations consulting. The job you're describing sounds like Operations consulting for banks and capital markets clients (stock exchanges/fintech etc). On some of this work, PwC would be competing with MBB (which does operations and implementations as well, not just strategy). If the job sounds interesting, you should ask the team in interviews who they pitch against and why they win/lose their pitches.
List of groups that offer transaction-related advisory services in some form or fashion. This may not be comprehensive, but it's pretty close. Source: I used to work in one of these groups
PwC Corporate Finance (actual IB work) Strategy& (management consulting) PwC DDV (Delivering Deal Value) (post-merger intergration, synergy planning) PwC Deal Strategy (pre-deal strategic consulting) PwC Capital Markets Advisory (IPO, capital raise, balance sheet advisory and accounting) PwC Deal Analytics (big data-driven analytics for deal planning, execution, and integration) PwC Transaction services (accounting diligence)