Over the past 15 years, I have worked in senior credit risk roles across global commodities and energy trading companies. During that time, credit risk management has evolved steadily, but since 2022, the change has been structural rather than incremental. Volatility, liquidity pressure and higher funding costs have fundamentally altered the role credit plays in energy trading.
Credit optimisation, once a niche and largely manual practice, has become a core capability for managing modern energy trading businesses.
Historically, credit risk management in energy trading focused on limit setting, exposure monitoring and counterparty controls. While optimisation techniques such as triangulations existed in the late 2010s, they were used by only a small number of firms and were operationally burdensome to execute.
That changed sharply in 2022. The war in Ukraine and the aftershocks of COVID caused unprecedented volatility in energy prices. At times, gas prices increased by a factor of ten within days. Margin calls escalated rapidly and, in some cases, could not be met, leading to several high-profile bankruptcies across the sector.
At the same time, interest rates and borrowing costs rose significantly. Managing margin collateral and working capital became materially more expensive. As a result, the wider market began to understand the importance of credit optimisation techniques that had previously been seen as optional or niche.
In the late 2010s, I worked at energy trading firms that recognised early the value of triangulations in reducing credit exposure and optimising working capital. Over several years, I manually executed more than EUR 700 million in triangulation trades.
At peak usage, this freed up around EUR 300 million annually in working capital and credit limits. This allowed trading to resume with counterparties where limits had previously been breached and significantly reduced the need to post cash collateral and bank guarantees. The freed capital could then be redeployed into other profit-generating activities. We also reduced annual funding costs by up to EUR 5 million, a figure that would be materially higher in today’s pricing and interest rate environment.
The conclusion from this experience was clear. Credit optimisation works. The problem is not the economics, but the way it has traditionally been executed.
Manual triangulations are effective, but they are slow, operationally intensive and difficult to repeat consistently. Analysing forward credit exposures, identifying optimisation opportunities and preparing data for execution can take days of credit analyst time. As a result, optimisation is often done weekly or monthly, while exposures and prices change daily.
In today’s markets, this mismatch matters. Funding costs accrue continuously, and credit limits are dynamic. Treating credit optimisation as a periodic exercise increasingly leaves firms constrained, more expensive to operate and less competitive.
This is where technology becomes unavoidable.
Credit Optimisation at ipushpull was built to automate the manual processes that historically limited optimisation frequency. The product analyses OTC and exchange power and gas credit exposures and liquidity on a daily basis and identifies credit optimisation and triangulation opportunities that reduce credit risk exposure and optimise working capital usage.
It integrates with existing ETRM and CTRM systems as well as Excel and API based data sources. Credit data is automatically transformed into consistent internal optimisation views and into the required input formats for third-party optimisation platforms. What previously took days of manual effort can now be completed in seconds, every day.
Importantly, this approach complements existing optimisation providers such as Komgo, Osttra and Griffin. It does not replace them. Instead, it enables daily processing and gives clients the flexibility to act internally or participate in third-party optimisation runs when they choose.
Each client has a separate cloud-hosted implementation. Credit data is never commingled, and clients retain full control and visibility of their data. ipushpull does not access proprietary client data. The platform is ISO 27001 certified and hosted in the UK, EU or US data centres, depending on client preference.
The product is initially focused on European power and gas markets, both OTC and exchange traded, physical and financial, with plans to expand to North America. It is designed for utilities, renewable generators and aggregators, oil and gas companies, industrial users, trading houses and financial institutions active in energy markets.
What has become clear is that monthly or even weekly credit optimisation is no longer sufficient. Energy markets move every day, exposures change every day, and funding costs accrue every day.
Firms that continue to treat credit optimisation as an occasional activity will increasingly find themselves constrained by credit limits and liquidity. Daily credit optimisation is no longer a nice-to-have. It is becoming a requirement for trading effectively in modern energy markets. To find out more, please head to the credit optimisation page.