In a recent Wall Street Journal article, PwC stated that they plan to limit the consulting services that they offer clients.

They plan to do this by 2025 for their SEC audit clients. They will do this by employing a number of new policies when performing consulting projects.

One huge piece of news in this article is that they won’t help their clients migrate their data to the cloud. This is a huge chunk of business in the market and is what the big 4 specialize in the consulting space.

The article cites the regulatory environment as the reason for this transition, and I believe that to be true too. I think PwC saw that EY was going to split their consulting business from the audit practice , and PwC was wondering what they could do to reassure regulators that they are independent. PwC is one of the most aggressive big 4 companies from an independence perspective. They provide a lot of non-audit services to their clients which is very risky from a regulatory perspective.

Going forward they will no longer provide these services.