Protecting the enterprise

In Power and utilities

We help you develop a more sustainable and cost-effective approach to risk and security, giving you the agility to adapt, as well as the resilience to respond to risk and threats in a transforming sector.

What EY can do for you

Power and utility companies continue to be challenged by downward pressures on revenues, while spending on risk management and compliance is escalating. Additionally, the industry is facing an inevitable tipping point to a new energy world, in which customers can generate and trade energy among themselves and with nontraditional players. Electricity networks are under catastrophic levels of stress while utilities are forced to invest more to keep up with change as margins fall.

How is your organization managing both today’s risks and the long-term risks of the new energy world?

How you adapt and respond to this transforming risk environment will determine whether you thrive or even survive a decade from now.

We work with you to take an in-depth look at your critical risks, assessing risk appetite and tolerance across your enterprise. We’ll help you develop the strategic frameworks, response and controls approaches as well as the governance you need to improve your risk and security model. We will give you the agility to adapt and the resiliency to respond in the most efficient and effective way.

How much are you overspending on risk and security?

The question isn’t whether you are overspending: it’s by how much. Siloed functions, along with ineffective operating models, cobbled together over the years through reactive responses and patchwork approaches to risk management, have driven up costs. They have also contributed to a risk landscape that is overcontrolled in some areas, while underinvested in others.

Using rapid diagnostics, we quickly challenge what gets done, where it gets done and who does it, identifying high-value areas to provide significant savings by:

  • Improving your controls framework to focus on the risks that matter and eliminate redundant controls
  • Centralizing risk monitoring to reduce costs and improve quality and efficiencies
  • Shifting resources and leveraging technology to automate controls where it makes good business sense
We offer customized services that can help you build a risk-aware organization

We bring significant benefit to power and utility companies by challenging the existing risk operating model and targeting the following areas for differential investment and focus.

  • Security

    Converging information technology, operational technology, and physical and logical security, as well as integrating cyber threats into the risk management approach, helps develop a mature detection and response capability, incident response and threat intelligence. At the same time, there is an overall rationalization of security monitoring tools, technologies and procedures.

  • Major programs

    The re-evaluation of traditional project prioritization methods (by considering the specific risk impact of investment options on future asset performance), combined with enhanced coordination of capital and project management activities across the asset life cycle, results in rationalized security programs, better cost efficiency and improved overall risk management.

  • Energy procurement, hedging and trading

    Implementing energy trading risk management software and providing on-call support for derivative accounting improves front-to-back processes, enhances responsiveness and realigns hedging activities for derivative trading and energy procurement teams.

  • Regulatory compliance

    Embedding a rigorous compliance framework consistent with regulatory standards and leading practices helps enhance business integrity and creates a framework for preventing, detecting and responding to potential compliance risks.

  • Regulatory recovery

    Adopting industry-leading accounting and analytics practices streamlines the preparation of rate case filings and testimony. Standardizing regulatory response processes and deploying leading technology tools and platforms help to drive further efficiencies.

Seizing the upsize of disruption

As the pace of change continues to accelerate, so will the intensity of risk. We can help you develop and manage an integrated, agile and resilient risk operating model that supports your organization’s risk transformation journey ready to reap the rewards of the new energy world.

Contact us

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