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
Record energy debt of £4.48bn reinforces need for deeper, coordinated action
Domestic energy debt has climbed to £4.48bn in Ofgem’s latest update, a ~£55m rise in the last quarter and ~£660m higher than a year ago. It's clear that more is needed to take control of the problem, with pressure set to grow over winter.
Three steps to improve collections as debt continues to rise
In this second article about reducing debt, we’re building on the short-term actions we shared in part one. We’re also featuring the stories and results from a few of our clients to help you take action, including how we delivered ~£50m benefit in 6 months. Being more proactive with your own debt will help you boost collections, improve systems and protect your organisation from future market changes, reforms and challenges.
How to protect customers and profits as household water debt reaches £2bn
Water debt now exceeds £2bn, while customer satisfaction is at an eight-year low, and regulatory pressure continues. It's making collections increasingly difficult, and placing further strain on bottom-line performance. Over the next two articles, we're looking at what it'll take to address this problem. We'll share practical steps to strengthen debt management, improve segmentation, and deliver hidden value.
Our Team
Operational Turnaround and Recovery
Jon Vincent
Client Director
Jon helps clients resolve problems with billing, settlements, and customer service.
Joseph Cooper
Manager
Joseph supports our Retail clients to improve their operational processes and business performance.
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.
Holly Tetley
Manager
Holly supports clients with large-scale business transformation programmes, delivering significant bottom line improvements through back-office optimisation.
Case Studies
Our Results
Identifying ~£30m cash benefit through debt maturity assessment
We partnered with an energy supplier to assess the maturity of their ~£150m debt book, identifying ~£30m of potential cash benefit through a series of tactical and strategic improvements.
Collecting ~£10m cash through debt campaigns for an energy supplier
We partnered with a medium-sized energy supplier to overlay digital capability onto their debt management process and run bespoke campaigns, leading to improved customer engagement and collections performance.
Delivering ~£50m debt collection benefit for energy retailer
Through our debt maturity assessment, combined with a broader focus on billing and customer contact activity, we identified routes to achieve ~£50m debt collection benefit for an energy retailer. This informed a targeted improvement programme to address capital adequacy challenges, driven by rising debt and BDC.