Submission to the Better Energy Customer Experiences Consultation

We welcome the Better Energy Customer Experiences (BECE) process because it is an opportunity to tackle deeply ingrained retail market issues in a sustained, strategic way. 

We consider there are opportunities for BECE to make some important changes quickly. While a much-needed overhaul of the framework for regulating retailers and protecting consumers will take longer, it is no less important.

While there are other important complementary reforms, our submission focuses largely on the value and urgency of introducing a consumer duty as a central component of an effective consumer protection framework for energy consumers.

A consumer duty is needed:

• to respond to – and ensure the regulatory framework can keep pace with – the increasing complexity of energy markets, services and products
• to refocus the regulatory and compliance culture from only following prescriptive rules towards providers proactively thinking about how to achieve good consumer outcomes
• to recognise the information asymmetry and imbalance of bargaining power in energy markets and shift responsibility for ensuring good consumer outcomes from consumers themselves to energy providers.

Download our submission (PDF, 431.06KB)