Verdantix Highlights AI Adoption Risks in Green Quadrant
As regulatory complexity intensifies and risk profiles change, more organisations are turning to enterprise risk management (ERM) consulting to maintain resilience.
Verdantix’s 2025 Green Quadrant report offers a benchmark of the top 15 ERM consulting providers worldwide, using a methodology that combines vendor briefings, a 50-point questionnaire and an assessment of capabilities and momentum.
Demand for ERM services is rising due to a wider spectrum of risk concerns, including rapidly increasing AI adoption. Other risks noted by Verdantix include ESG requirements, cybersecurity and third-party risk.
Verdantix categorises ERM providers into two tiers.
The first includes the Big Four — Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC — which specialise in large-scale, technology-enabled ERM programmes.
These firms support complex transformations and are preferred by global businesses dealing with multi-layered risk landscapes.
Leaders on the impact of AI
EY is identified as a leader, gaining high scores across several ERM categories: financial risk, operational resilience, risk advisory and analytics.
The firm draws on partnerships with Microsoft, SAP and ServiceNow, using these alliances to embed AI and other digital tools into its offerings to help clients.
EY’s sector-specific experience benefits clients in regulated fields such as finance, energy and manufacturing.
EY Global Telecommunications Leader Cédric Foray discusses the impact of AI on organisations: “Gen AI’s impact on employee and customer experiences requires attention to mitigate downside risks, while telcos should stay alert to evolving regulatory imperatives designed to build confidence in AI.”
PwC joins EY in the Leaders quadrant. The firm combines AI-enabled ERM solutions with a strong client base and has continued expanding its ESG and tech advisory capabilities.
Its UK Government and Health Industries Leader Rachel Taylor notes: “The government’s AI strategy is a major policy lever to help enhance UK productivity and drive growth.
“There is a critical link in how this strategy enables the successful delivery of an industrial strategy so AI can be harnessed to drive productivity of the UK’s priority and wider sectors.”
PwC UK Chief Technology Officer Umang Paw highlights the firm’s AI workforce plans: “The plan to use the immigration system to recruit thousands of AI experts, while encouraging students to take up AI-focused courses, is an important measure in challenging the country’s acute AI skills-shortage.”
He adds that PwC’s data indicates “the most AI-exposed business sectors see a fivefold increase in the rate of productivity growth and UK employers are willing to pay a 14% wage premium for jobs that require AI skills.”
Innovation, investigation and strategy
Outside the Big Four, a range of mid-market and specialist firms round out the Green Quadrant. McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) rank as challengers.
These firms are better known for corporate strategy but are expanding into ERM, with strong growth trajectories though limited breadth in service coverage.
McKinsey Senior Partner Harald Fanderl highlights customer-focused ERM as a business imperative: “Customer experience has emerged as a strategic imperative. Now more than ever, organisations can take a data-driven approach to predict customer behaviour, actively monitor satisfaction, anticipate churn and turn loyalty into profitability.”
Personalised risk support for mid-market organisations
Beyond AI adoption and risk, the Green Quadrant’s second tier also includes firms geared toward medium-sized clients, offering focused support on ESG, compliance and financial risk.
Grant Thornton, BDO and RSM deliver regulatory and risk services with more personalisation and agility compared to their larger competitors. These firms are well-suited to organisations looking for compliance support without undertaking enterprise-wide transformation projects.
Among more specialised providers, dss+ — formerly DuPont Sustainable Solutions — is acknowledged for its work in operational risk and resilience, particularly in manufacturing and industry sectors.
UK-based Baringa is also highlighted for its ESG and energy-sector risk expertise, though its internal control offerings are currently more limited.
As business risk becomes increasingly digital, interconnected and regulated, the right ERM consultancy can help companies balance innovation with compliance against critical challenges related to AI and other areas.
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