The new service line expands Accenture's risk-related services as market demand continues to increase in response to recent turbulence in the global economy.

The new service line will help companies more accurately and quickly identify and evaluate risk-adjusted business opportunities and help them extend their risk management function beyond compliance. By combining Accenture's deep industry and process experience with its capabilities in data mining, risk analytics and systems integration, the new service line will provide clients with information that supports advanced decision making and early warning solutions that can detect emerging threats and opportunities.

The new service line will also help companies establish their risk management organizations and governance structures, design risk management processes and streamline risk reporting. More broadly, the Accenture Risk Management service line will offer a range of services to help organizations design and develop integrated risk-related solutions that are tightly aligned with business functions across their enterprise.

"Our clients recognize the importance of risk management and the need to overhaul risk processes and systems to further integrate and embed these into the company's decision-making processes," said Mark Foster, Accenture's group chief executive, Global Markets and Management Consulting. "Expanding our Risk Management practice into a dedicated service line demonstrates our commitment to helping clients address these critical needs."

A survey of 260 corporate executives by Accenture in 2009 underscores the growing importance of risk management in today's business climate. According to the survey, 85 percent of the executives said their companies need to overhaul their risk management approach to achieve better business results. Among the specific problems they identified were: ineffective integration of risk, return and capital issues in decision-making; a lac a lack of alignment between the company's strategies and its appetite for risk; shortcomings in the corporate risk culture; inadequate availability of timely risk, finance and business data; a lack of integration and aggregation across risk types; and ambiguous assignment of risk responsibilities between the corporate organization and individual business units.

"In an increasingly volatile and uncertain marketplace, the high-performing companies will be those that strengthen their risk governance, upgrade risk analytics and incorporate advanced risk reporting," said Steve Culp, managing director of Accenture's Risk Management service line. "Risk is rapidly moving out of the back office, and management must balance the need to create value with the need to protect shareholders. As a result, companies must break down organizational silos and integrate risk management across the enterprise in order to succeed."

Culp said that global operating models, highly networked organizations, rapidly changing customer preferences, volatile financial markets, government regulatory requirements and complex flows of information in today's business environment are all contributing to a growing need for more sophisticated and integrated risk management solutions.