Supply Point Administration – Facilitation of Faster Switching

1. Supply Point Administration – Facilitation of Faster Switching MOD 477 • The Secretary of State recently challenged the industry to speed up the switching process, but without compromising quality of service, consumer rights, or adding to bills • There is an expectation that changes should be made as soon as possible (by the end of 2014), to ensure that early benefits are provided to consumers • Energy UK established a working party to address this challenge, examining a number of options in conjunction with Ofgem and others, to identify changes required across both gas and electricity arrangements • The switching process currently takes a total of 5 weeks where a cooling-off period is required (2 weeks for cool off and 3 weeks for industry process) • Mod 477 is simplistic in its aims and solution as it seeks to trim the existing industry element of the switching process by 5 working days by reducing the Confirmation Window • Alongside process changes to be made by Suppliers (submission of the confirmation file to xoserve within the cooling-off period) this proposal will reduce the overall process timeline to 2 weeks plus 2 working days, known as the ‘2 plus 2’ solution • Xoserve have been engaged with the development of this proposal and have started to consider potential changes required to existing processes and flows – an indicative implementation lead time of 10 months has been advised • We therefore seek prompt progression of this proposal through the modification process with the Final Modification Report being presented to the April Mod Panel for panel recommendation (at the latest) 1