Cut control clutter. Keep risk in check.
Traditional process fixes often fail because they miss the human behaviours behind control clutter. PwC applies behavioural science to redesign how people think, decide and act on risk — making controls more effective, easier to operate, and more sustainable.
Many organisations are built for safety, but not always for execution. Over time, risk aversion, layered approvals, duplicated controls and 'just in case' decision-making can create a control environment that is complex, costly and difficult for the business to navigate. The result is execution drag: slower decisions, more hand-offs, repeated rework, unclear ownership and limited visibility over whether controls are genuinely reducing the most material risks.
PwC’s controls optimisation approach recognises that sustainable change is not achieved by simply reducing the number of controls. Controls are a behavioural system: they shape what people notice, how they escalate, what they document, when they seek approval and whether they feel empowered to challenge low-value activities. Our approach therefore starts with a different question:
What behaviour is each control intended to drive, and is it working?
Reduce likelihood
Shape decision before it is made so the right action becomes the default and errors are designed out rather than caught later (e.g. error proofing), or drive behaviours to steer away from a known emerging risk event.
Reduce likelihood and impact
Direct attention to the anomalies that genuinely matter, instead of checking everything with equal effort, to trigger the desired behaviours to reduce likelihood or impact.
Reduce impact
Contain the impact when something does go wrong by driving the necessary behaviours to limit the damage after the event has occurred.
Influence action or inaction
Improve the quality of the decision at its source, often reducing the need for a formal control at all (e.g. incentives to motivate desirable behaviours); or consequences to deter undesirable behaviours in the absence of formal controls.
Most control environments are heavy on signals and backstops, that check and correct after the fact. Real optimisation shifts weight toward guardrails and behavioural nudges, which prevent the problem in the first place.
We map controls to material risks and defined risk appetite to identify over-controlled, under-controlled or misaligned areas, establishing a Minimum Effective Control baseline so control effort is directed by risk rather than habit.
We make the hidden cost of controls visible by assessing time spent, operational friction and rework, then linking that effort to the control’s value through risk reduction, regulatory necessity and business outcomes.
We upskill process owners and control operators to think like risk owners, not control executors, equipping them with practical tools to challenge, redesign, justify or retire controls safely.
We diagnose the behavioural drivers behind control accumulation, such as risk aversion, loss aversion, audit optics, herding and fear of removal, then design interventions that make simpler, risk-intelligent decisions easier to make.
We review processes and controls through lenses such as duplication, redundancy, preventive-first design, error proofing, automation and standardisation to reduce friction while preserving risk outcomes.
We help embed the approach through refreshed standards, governance, dashboards, playbooks and behavioural reinforcers, so controls do not re-accumulate and optimisation becomes part of the organisation’s normal way of working.
