Director
Rachel Littlewood
Phone
07950 698860Specialisms:
- M&A/Special Situations
- Driving Sustainable Debt Resolution
- Commercial Strategy
- Financial Optimisation
Rachel leads our operational and financial turnaround engagements, working closely with clients to solve complex operational challenges while maximising both commercial performance and customer outcomes. She combines a strategic focus with a deep understanding of customer needs, ensuring that each solution is tailored to drive sustainable growth.
Rachel excels in identifying and addressing critical issues related to revenue and margin leakage, debt management, and operating costs. By deploying targeted solutions, she helps clients unlock significant improvements in financial performance. Her approach is particularly focused on ensuring that debt resolution strategies not only alleviate short-term pressures but also foster long-term customer financial resilience. Rachel is passionate about ensuring customers in debt receive the right support at the right time, and her focus on fostering open communication and delivering tailored solutions results in fair outcomes for both businesses and customers.
In addition to driving financial optimisation, Rachel brings extensive expertise in M&A transactions, where she plays a pivotal role in providing financial insights and ensuring that both commercial and customer outcomes are aligned. Whether through due diligence or post-transaction integration, her approach ensures that each deal is structured to support sustainable business and customer success.
Before joining BFY, Rachel spent over 13 years in finance, commercial, and operations roles within the energy industry. Most recently, she was Head of Credit Risk and Collections at E.ON, where she led large teams focused on customer resolution, financial sustainability, and improving processes to support customers facing financial difficulty.
Start a conversation with:
Rachel Littlewood
News
Customer Debt Insights
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Why is energy debt still going up?
Recent media coverage is recycling something that as an industry we’ve understood for a while – energy debt is still going up. But why? Compared to 2 years ago the macro economic picture is positive – prices have fallen significantly and incomes are outpacing inflation. This should all be driving debt down, but it’s growing.
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Suppliers face prepay balancing act as additional support credits hit £150m
Understanding who in the prepayment portfolio needs support - and how much - remains critical for energy suppliers. While ~£9 of the current price cap includes a temporary allowance for bad debt, this relies on suppliers operating at a ‘notionally efficient’ level. Rachel Littlewood and the team outline five steps to help you enhance your approach, and strike the right balance between support, operating costs, and bad debt.
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Domestic suppliers will need to make up £250m cash shortfall
Domestic energy suppliers faced a £250m cash coverage deficit at end of Q3. For the third consecutive quarter, suppliers had to finance a shortfall in net balances, even as customer credit balances reached their seasonal peak. It marks a shift from previous years, when suppliers had a positive net cash position during this period.
Our Team
Operational Turnaround and Recovery
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Jon Vincent
Client Director
Jon helps clients resolve problems with billing, settlements, and customer service.
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Lauren McCullough
Senior Manager
Lauren leads our clients through Operational Excellence, Lean Transformations and Continuous Improvement activity.
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Joseph Cooper
Manager
Joseph supports our Retail clients to improve their operational processes and business performance.
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Ed Breslin
Manager
Ed works with clients to improve their cash flow/revenue delivery, and leading the Commercial/Financial Modelling within our M&A/Transaction Advisory engagements.
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Holly Odle
Manager
Holly supports clients with large-scale business transformation programmes, delivering significant bottom line improvements through back-office optimisation.
View ProfileCase Studies
Our Results
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Identifying ~£50m BDC reduction opportunities for energy retailer
Through our debt maturity assessment, combined with a broader focus on billing and customer contact activity, we identified routes to achieve a ~£50m BDC reduction for an energy retailer. This informed a targeted improvement programme to address capital adequacy challenges, driven by rising debt and BDC.
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Cash recovery initiatives deliver ~£275m benefit for large Energy supplier
Our debt team supported a large Energy supplier with recovering their cash position, achieving a total benefit of ~£275m through collaborative initiatives.
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£4.5m in Bad Debt benefits for large energy retailer
We helped a large energy retailer to generate immediate in-year debt benefits through tactical interventions. Our programme delivered ~£4.5m in Bad Debt benefit and ~£8.5m in cash collection, all while maintaining customer and productivity measures within the operation.