Three new partners for South East Asian Consulting arm of PwC

PwC has appointed three new partners in its Southeast Asian management consulting wing: Shaun Ryan, Martijn Schouten and Simon Tong. 

PwC’s Southeast Asian consulting practice comprises all of the firm’s consulting units in the region, including those in Singapore, the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia. The arm, which helps clients with services spanning strategy, operations, finance & risk, people & organisation, people & risk and technology, among others, has recently seen three new senior experts admitted into its partnership.

Two of the partners – Shaun Ryan and Martijn Schouten – were promoted from the firm’s internal ranks. The latter, a Dutchman by origin, has been with PwC South East Asia for nearly seven years, following his office transfer from PwC in the Netherlands in 2012. At the Big Four firm, Schouten specialises in offerings including business transformation, change management, leadership alignment and human resource strategy & transformation. Schouten, who earlier in his career worked for HR consultancy giant Willis Towers Watson and Dutch insurance company Delta Lloyd, currently serves as the People & Organisation service line leader for the region. 

Shaun Ryan joined PwC in the summer of 2016 as a senior advisor in PwC’s Technology practice for the Financial Services industry. Since then, the UK national has seen his portfolio grow, and today he is PwC’s Technology Consulting practice leader in Singapore and the South East Asia leader for the firm's Digital & Emerging Technology unit. This arm focuses on helping clients embracing emerging technologies such as Digital, IoT, Intelligent Enterprise, Enterprise Architecture, Blockchain, Agile and Cloud. 

Ryan further has a global role under his belt: at the start of 2018 he was named PwC’s global head of its Intelligent Automation and Artificial Intelligence practice. “At PwC, we believe the adoption of AI and intelligent process automation is different to traditional technology transformations. We believe these technologies fundamentally challenge an organisation’s status quo – from how a business and their workforce thinks, governs and operates in the future,” Ryan explained. The expert, who previously worked for ANZ in Australia, the UK Home Office in the UK, and Avanade and Accenture in the UK, leads all delivery, client management and research of the wing. 

Singapore-based Simon Tong has joined PwC from Deloitte, where he served as the firm’s Operational Consulting Lead for Banking in South East Asia. Tong worked for around five years for Deloitte Consulting, and previously served Accenture for eight years in Singapore and Melbourne. At PwC, he will leverage his expertise in financial services – banking, insurance, capital markets, FinTechs and more – to lead its Financial Services Operations Consulting practice. Tong specialises in large scale operational transformation to enable digital growth, improve efficiency and productivity and boost regulatory compliance.

Meanwhile, across PwC’s other divisions in Singapore, the accountancy and consultancy also appointed three other partners: Thangaraja Nadaraja (Risk Assurance), TIA Siew Nam Tia (Corporate Tax) and Wanyi Wong (Financial Services).

The PwC South East Asian Consulting practice works closely together with the firm’s Australia, New Zealand and US consulting arms, as part of a joint venture agreed back in 2013. The unit is led by Neil Plumridge, Managing Partner of PwC Consulting in Australia, South East-Asia and New Zealand (ASEANZ). The former EY and A.T. Kearney partner succeeded Derek Kidley in the summer of 2014, with Kidley now serving as PwC’s US Advisory Inbounds Leader. “This joint venture allows us to take this to the next level,” said Plumridge, adding, “as we are able to share resources, capabilities and expertise across the region.”