To Go Big on Blockchain, 'Big Four' Firm PwC Thinking Small

To scale up its blockchain work, 'Big Four' audit firm PwC is thinking small with its strategy.

PwC FinTech director Geraldine Balaj yesterday revealed fresh details about her firm's plans at Blockchain Conference New York. There, Balaj didn't talk about joining the latest, large industry consortia, but about how her company is seeking to form smaller groups designed to find efficiencies in markets on a much more local scale.

Addressing a group of about 200 people at her company’s global headquarters, Balaj said:

"We are really establishing micro-consortia and playing match-maker to a lot of our clients… to basically come up with the standards that we’ve been trying to do for years."

Balaj said that in addition to looking at industry-level cooperation, the "Big Four" accounting firm is meeting with its clients to help identify points of connection between the companies.

Potential areas where such cross-company efficiencies might exist, she said, include in syndicated commercial lending; collateral management and optimization; and "any back-end office process".

The comments are notable as Balaj only recently became a FinTech director at the firm specializing in blockchain and distributed ledgers. At around the same time, she joined, a previous PwC FinTech director, Jeremy Drane, left the company to take a job as chief commercial officer at blockchain startup Libra.

Overall, the event focused on how the distributed ledger industry can learn from the past three years of innovation and build mature products that save time and money.

Image of Geraldine Balaj via Michael del Castillo