Johnny Timpson OBE calls on utilities providers to go beyond compliance to support vulnerable customers

Consumer champion and industry veteran Johnny Timpson OBE has urged the utilities sector to radically improve how it identifies and supports vulnerable customers – calling on firms to go beyond regulatory requirements to provide better and more targeted support, and unlock key commercial benefits.

Speaking at the Utility Week Consumer Vulnerability and Debt Conference, Johnny Timpson – who is chair of support services provider MorganAsh – told delegates that the sector needs to be smarter and more joined-up on regulatory policy and practice, as well as data-sharing to improve customer intervention and support.

Timpson argued that support is now most pressing with an increase in the energy price cap due in October 2025 and Uswitch declaring that the UK is in an energy debt crisis.

“With average household energy arrears now over £1,500 and GPs reporting that nearly a quarter of their case load is linked to financial health issues, the utilities sector cannot afford to treat customer vulnerability as a tick-box exercise,” he said. “The need to be both innovative and proactive in delivering tailored solutions and support is more pressing than ever.

“It’s past time for all of us in essential regulated sectors to realise, and respond to, the fact that when we fail our vulnerable customers, their support needs remain. This drama then becomes a multi-agency and pan-regulated sector crisis – with our NHS increasingly having to pick up the pieces.”

He welcomed the renewed focus of both Ofgem and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on customer vulnerability and debt strategy, as well as growing collaboration between water and energy firms to share data. However, he stressed that work must go “much further, and far faster,” while firms must treat regulation as “the beginning of our help for vulnerable customers, not the extent of it.”

Alongside improved data-sharing, Timpson called on the sector to adopt a common definition of vulnerability and to invest in digital tools and vulnerability tech currently available in the market to not just improve management and engagement, but to eliminate siloes and personalise service.

“There is a both a need and a commercial benefit to going beyond what regulators want – and to provide better and more targeted support,” Timpson told delegates. “The current approach is fragmented. Consumers are stuck having the same conversations over and over. The data is siloed, and so are the solutions. This is where the real opportunity lies: to build a more holistic and supportive ecosystem that uses customer vulnerability data in a much more meaningful way to provide more personalised, more sustainable and more dignified outcomes.”

MorganAsh is a specialist in Consumer Duty and customer vulnerability. The firm launched its award-winning MARS platform to help firms understand and monitor vulnerable customers and deliver good outcomes – as required by Consumer Duty. It is in use across the utilities sector and financial services, enabling businesses to adopt a consistent approach to identifying vulnerable characteristics and generate an objective Resilience Rating – much like a credit score.