I am deliberating on what field I want to pursue within consultancy, so your thoughts/experience on risk management as a field would be much appreciated.Specifically, what are the career prospects in terms of pay, type of projects, long term career options etc..Also, I have offers from E&Y and ACN- both seem to be recruiting aggresively in this field. Which should I go for?

I've run op/mkt/cred/liq risk consulting practices in the past. It is a broad and thriving sector whether you come at it from the regulatory or the trading angle. IMHO to be credible as a genuine risk consultant (able to get into models as opposed to a generic waffler about trends) you will need serious maths. People I've seen do best in the reg space have come into consultancy from an audit background. Longer term, I've seen senior risk consultants go on to hd of op risk, quant roles on the trading floor, and hds of various risk IT sub-specialisms. I know quite a few of the EY team and there are some good functionally strong guys there, though not the best salesmen to drive a pipeline. I've never particularly rated ACN in this space, and I wonder whether their capability suffered further in the recent Capco migrations. I'd say Deloitte are stronger than either.