Professional advisory firm PwC has confirmed it is splitting its assurance practice as part of a series of initiatives that will create more than 500 new audit jobs across the UK.
As exclusive revealed by BusinessLive on Tuesday, the firm is also committed to investing an additional £30m annually in staff training and technology initiatives.
The move will see its assurance practice split into two distinct businesses - audit and risk assurance. The current unified business employs more than 5,000 in the UK.
The audit practice will focus on external audit and audit-related services, while the risk assurance practice will focus on other services such as internal audit, cyber security and technology risk.
It is also creating a new national digital audit team.
In an investment that will see it recruiting more than 500 experienced audit professionals , PwC will increase by two-thirds the number of specialists in its audit quality control team.
The new jobs will be spread across its UK network of 25 offices.
In Cardiff, where the firm has a current head count of around 300, it will be creating 100 additional cyber-security specialists roles over the next five years.
It currently has a cyber-security team of 25 in the city, with a further 20 expected to be recruited by the autumn. There will be mixture of roles from senior to graduate.
It comes as the big four accountancy firms in the UK, in PwC, EY, KPMG and Deloitte, are under increasing pressure to act to end their domination in the marketplace, with one route being a separation of their respective audit functions from consultancy activities.
In a recent long-awaited report the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) it said it had found a "number of deep-seated problems" in the market, including lack of choice and a "fundamental" conflict between audit arms and their larger and more lucrative consultancy divisions.
Hemione Hudson, head of audit at PwC UK, said: “Over the last year, we have been listening to the views of a wide range of stakeholders about the future of audit - exploring how it needs to change to meet society’s evolving expectations.
"Given the important role that auditing plays in the modern economy, everyone that relies on audit work needs to have the same high level of confidence in its transparency, objectivity and effectiveness.
“This announcement is a demonstration of our commitment to audit and to continually improving and strengthening audit quality. We have said for some time that we support changes that will improve audit quality.
"The investments and changes we are putting in place will ensure that our people have the skills, knowledge and mindset to perform audits to a consistently high quality day-in, day-out.”
PwC employs 22,000, with 9,000 partners, in the UK.
It is also commissioning an independent paper from Karthik Ramanna, Professor of business and public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, on what a culture of challenge means for auditors in 2019.
