Our ongoing response to COVID-19 As it continues to evolve, the COVID-19 pandemic has had seen most of our clients and engagement teams complete an unprecedented impact on our clients and our people, as a full audit cycle on an almost entirely remote basis. well as on global and local economies and wider society. The pervasive nature of this impact requires us to conduct To support our audit teams in dealing with these challenges, an ongoing assessment of how we respond to the changing we’ve issued guidance, for example with respect to performing risks the pandemic presents. inventory counts in a COVID-19 environment. We’ve also encouraged the use – where necessary – of specialists to support At PwC, in addition to continuing to safeguard the health, audit teams on speciifc areas such as impairment and going safety and wellbeing of our people, we have remained concern analysis. focused on working together as a network, with our clients and with other stakeholders to continue to deliver A member ifrm’s system of quality management provides the audit quality. framework to identify, assess and respond to the risks arising from the pandemic. And as the pandemic continues to progress, From the early stages of the pandemic, we put a team we share experiences and examples from across our network in place to monitor COVID-19 developments globally and to provide continuous and real-time learning to our people and to highlight areas of critical importance to support our help them respond to evolving risks and challenges. Our quality execution of quality audits – including looking at how we framework is built on the solid foundations of our purpose, values can best equip PwC ifrms and engagement teams to identify and quality culture, and this bedrock has been more important emerging or changing risks and respond appropriately . than ever over the past year-and-a-half. We developed speciifc guidance on the impact of COVID-19 for our engagement teams around the world covering critical Using technology aspects of audit quality, including regulatory and standard- Our audit technology infrastructure and tools have been in place setting updates, audit reporting, methodology, accounting, for a number of years, and enabled our people to continue to and learning and education. This gave our teams the critical carry out their work despite the signiifcant change in our physical means to assess the unique circumstances at play and working environment. respond accordingly Today, the impact of COVID-19 continues to evolve. In response, Meeting challenges we’re continuing to monitor and address its ongoing effects on As a result of the pandemic we faced a number of new our people and clients, including the implications of the changing challenges in our audits, not least because this past year has or easing of restrictions.