Are Energy Retailers Fit for Purpose? with Carl Haigney (Capgemini)

Yeah, and it's interesting that you mentioned the initial deregulation of retail and the buzz that was happening at that point, as someone that was kind of there.

What was the promise of, we're suddenly going to have this competition? this is the kind of innovation that's going to drive.

And what do you think maybe the reality has been in terms of consolidation of the big six, as they were then called? We've had some disruption since, but maybe starting with that kind

of big six era.

Well, the consumer promise was always cheaper prices, more flexibility.

You could move from one to the other.

And if you look at energy retail, I say it's a very simple business in theory.

Price is the big promise they make to customers or made to customers.

And so, yeah, over the years, that did evolve.

Switching rates did evolve and grow.

But it's become a little bit stagnant now with the price cap and things like that in place.

So what we're looking to do now, looking back, we need to reinvigorate that promise to the consumers to say this is about handling volatility, managing your assets, managing all of those things in your household that – can drive your overall energy efficiency.

And the technical promise, obviously, the neater arrangements, new energy trading and all that sort of stuff, technically, we were getting in position for switching for, in theory, the ability to move retailers on a much more frequent basis.

And we're now very much closer to that.

But we're not fully there yet.

And I think eventually the world will get to a position where you'll be able to switch much more frequently than you can do today, almost on an hour-by-hour basis.

Why wouldn't you buy the next unit of energy from the cheapest provider or the one that's going to give you the best service?

Yeah, and I guess there's a challenge there between, because you're right, initially after kind of opening up at the markets, there was an assumption that everyone would be switching all the time.

And the reality that we saw was actually, you know, some people switch.

There's some surveys that I saw.

So in fact, my first job was working for an energy retailer in Bulb back when they were still around.

I worked there for about three, four months where they were kind of somewhere between a startup and a regular energy company.

And so at the time was looking at kind of statistics about what consumers felt.

And it always shocked me the number of people that didn't know that you could switch.

Are you allowed to do that? Because obviously back in the day it wasn't allowed.