Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | JULY 2022 | 39 U nited Utilities has seen one in two customers sign up to the open bank- ing scheme it launched last year, according to its new chief executive. Speaking at Utility Week Live, Louise Beardmore described how the company had taken administration of the project in-house a• er an underwhelming response when it was • rst launched with a third party in July last year. The process, which has been imported from • nancial services, relies on an income- veri• cation tool that allows United Utilities to check if a customer quali• es for social tar- i- s by gaining consent to access their bank account data. The app-to-app authentication stream- lines an otherwise lengthy manual process. United Utilities and Eon are among the pio- neers of the technology in the utilities sector. Beardmore, who was unveiled as chief executive designate of the water company in April, told Utility Week Live: "When we • rst looked at doing open banking I'll be honest I wasn't convinced. Why would I let a water company have a look at what's in my bank account? What's in it for me? "Just short of 50% of our customers are allowing us to do that now. So if you con- tact United Utilities and we think we can get you on an a- ordability scheme, what used to happen is three weeks of messing around with pieces of paper. We can now get some- one on a support scheme in less than seven minutes by simply by talking to customers about open banking. "We saw just 99% customer satisfaction because it's about a value exchange and we can do it then and there in literally minutes." Beardmore was speaking on a panel with Jo Causon, chief executive of the Institute of Customer Service, and Andrew Schein of the Behaviour Insights Team. The discussion delved into the need for utilities to harness the power of its customer data and to com- municate the bene• ts of doing so. Schein pointed to research showing a clear appetite from customers to be triggered to seek support or change their behaviour based on their own data. However, he said this needed to be linked to implicit messages about why this bene• ted them. Heat-as-a-service is viable A trial of heat-as-a-service in the form of the Warm Homes Prescription pilot, run by the Energy Systems Catapult (ESC), has shown that it is possible for sup- pliers to o- er energy-as-a-service under cur- rent market rules. The ESC's design team lead, Edmund Hunt, said that while current market rules mean customers are forced to buy their energy in the form of kilowatt-hours, the trial was still able to bill participants on the basis of "warm hours". The ESC's Warm Home Prescription pro- gramme has seen patients in the Gloucester- shire area prescribed heating by the NHS to help control respiratory conditions that are exacerbated by cold living conditions. While the project has been deemed a resounding success by the ESC, Hunt told Utility Week Live that calculating the price of a subscription model in a market based on variable pricing is challenging. "One tactic might be to think about those consumers who could be lower risk in terms of price, thinking about the building arche- type that they are in, such as less leaky homes," he said. "Equally with the little information you can get you can start to understand how to price that service over a period of time in history. That's the complicated way of doing it but also one of the least risky ways… there's no reason why suppliers and others in the industry can't do that." Although it is possible to do under the current market models, Archie Lasseter, sustainability lead, Utilita said that the shi• towards renewables which will produce energy at a • xed constant price will help the transition to a subscription-based model as prices will be more certain for suppliers. But Naomi Baker, senior policy man- ager at Energy UK, said that market reform was essential before energy suppliers could really start o- ering the service subscriptions expected to the future of energy retail. Lucinda Dann, features editor Show sponsor One-in-two sign up for UU open banking Heat Customer Service while, as one of the sector's self-imposed Public Interest Commitments, it has pledged to halve leakage rates from 2010 levels by 2050. Sam Bright, innovation programme manager at Yorkshire Water, told the ses- sion about results from an ongoing smart network pilot in Shež eld. The company installed a fully integrated platform with real-time informed hydraulic model simu- lator in the area of 80,000 customers, using narrow band Internet of Things and • xed network systems. The set-up pro- vided 15-minute reads every four hours and within high-intensity monitoring areas reduced leakage by 32%, while visible leaks were cut by 57%. The company saw mains repairs reduced by 27.6% and associated carbon dioxide was cut by 41%. Bright said the experience has high- lighted the bene• ts of using digital twins to tackle leakage, adding that Yorkshire would target the same approach in other high-leakage areas across its region. He said "less intense solutions" would be used in areas that faced less signi• cant leakage. Ruth Williams, water correspondent Beardmore agreed, saying: "When we • rst launched [the open banking initiative] take- up was less than 3% because we were doing it through a third party. We changed that to be United Utilities – water for the North West – and we also trained our people in the ben- e• ts for the customers, which gave them the con• dence to talk about it. A• er that we saw the take-up improve considerably. It's about trust. If you're clear and there is that trusted relationship, that's where you can really focus on the outcomes." James Wallin, editor, Utility Week Louise Beardmore, CEO, United Utilities

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