Message from the William Buck Chair

Challenging economic times both domestically and globally have only served to highlight the strength of the William Buck Group in 2022. Achieving growth organically and through strategic mergers has allowed us to respond to heightened demand for our depth of knowledge and breadth of services.

As the middle market remains resilient and continues to drive economic growth, the underlying strength and continuity of our relationships is what enables us to maintain and grow our strong client base in this segment, which we’ve remained true to for over 125 years.

We recognise that our continued success depends on our people. We are committed to strengthening the engagement of our people through nurturing a collaborative culture and striving to embody our values in all that we do. Our efforts were realised this year when William Buck was awarded a Voice Project Best Workplace award for outstanding performance in work practices and employee engagement.

Building a sustainable workforce is our priority and we do this not only by focusing on engagement but by providing a continuous learning environment which supports and develops our people to realise their full potential.

To underpin our learning and development framework, and investment in our talent, we have created the new role of Group Chief Learning Officer to which we’ve promoted from within. In addition, we have appointed a new Group Chief Risk Officer and Group Chief Operating Officer. Progressing our commitment to learning, quality, systems and risk will strengthen our ability to grow and provide the best quality advice and support for our clients.

Our Audit and Assurance services are a core offering and our auditors play a vital role in instilling confidence in the capital markets. Because of this, we recognise the importance of our public interest responsibilities. In these challenging times, the role of the auditor is more critical and complex than ever. We are committed to maintaining a comprehensive understanding of the changing and complex regulatory and compliance requirements and to respond with honesty, urgency and integrity.

In this Transparency Report for the year ended 30 June 2022, we set out to demonstrate the quality control systems, methodology, people and governance structures we have implemented to assist our audit practitioners to deliver high quality client services. We are proud of the commitments we have made to continuous improvements in audit quality and in the growth of our audit teams across all William Buck offices in Australia and New Zealand.

We welcome the opportunity to engage with our stakeholders on how we deliver high-quality audit services to our clients through the publication of our Transparency Report.

Jamie McKeough Chair William Buck Group