PricewaterhouseCoopers is acquiring “substantially all the assets” of Bay Area–based fintech consultancy Kunai, a move the Big Four firm says will help banks quickly test its technology modernization solutions, giving CFOs early evidence of return on investment to present to internal decision makers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Kunai specializes in AI, automation, cloud engineering and core banking systems, with a team that includes mid- to senior-level engineers, Sandeep Sood, the company’s founder, told CFO Dive. Through the acquisition, PwC is angling to offer faster delivery of tech solutions, giving decision makers tangible evidence of results before committing full budgets to transformations.
CFOs are at the forefront of “approving large-scale change for their financial institutions,” amid a rising urgency to upgrade legacy infrastructure and in the face of talent shortages, said Sean Viergutz, a partner at PwC who leads its banking and capital markets advisory business. “A CFO will care, because we can be outcome based and say, ‘We’ve done this before. We know we can deliver this for you.’”
Many of the systems behind transformation efforts, including general ledgers, core banking and loan accounting platforms, can fall within a CFO’s scope, Viergutz said.
Financial institutions are also moving critical functions to the cloud, modernizing payment platforms and embedding AI into workflows.
The rush to upgrade legacy infrastructure often hinges on quick board approvals, and Kunai’s rapid-prototyping approach can give CFOs the early evidence they need to secure the green light, he added.
“We’re going to see much more often, much more frequently, CFOs demand[ing] to see a prototype…[and] doing so in a way where they have not committed millions and millions of dollars [in] spend ahead of time,” Sood said.
Rolling out tech faster
While small- to mid-sized financial institutions are rushing to update old infrastructure, PwC also sees Kunai’s capabilities as valuable to larger financial institutions. In particular, many are hobbled by lengthy request for proposal (RFP) processes for digital transformation, and Kunai’s model could help modernize them, challenging outdated assumptions and helping firms execute faster, Sood said.
“We can do this work with a much smaller army of people in less time,” he said. “We’re challenging the parameters of the RFPs… built for an older era of offshore outsourcing.”
Bringing enablement back to internal teams
PwC aims to use Kunai’s capabilities to shepherd new digital transformation initiatives among clients, but the ultimate goal is for them to lead these initiatives internally, Sood said. Kunai has a track record of building and hosting platforms, then transitioning them back to clients to take the reins, he noted.
“We don’t want to be around forever… we transition [platforms] back to our clients so they can take control long term,” Sood said.
On AI, Kunai doesn’t position it as a standalone product. Instead, PwC will approach each project holistically, incorporating AI where it can add value and treating it as a standard part of the engineering process, Sood said.
The deal builds on PwC’s other recent tech acquisitions, including Sagence, Surfaceink, Netrovert, ACTS and EagleDream — part of a strategy to expand engineering depth and digital enablement capabilities.
