Nicole Kobie reveals the startups building tools to cut energy use, reduce bills and find help for those who need it
It’s expensive to be British these days, with the two-year-long cost of living crisis continuing to bite. How tough is the situation? Energy prices spiked when Russia invaded Ukraine, with average bills climbing 27%. Inflation peaked at 11% in October 2022, but remains high at almost 7% in September 2023, well above comparable economies in Europe or the US, with the cost of food up 12%.
The Bank of England has responded the only way it knows how, hiking interest rates to 5.25%, adding to the pressure for those with mortgages. At the same time, household incomes are down in real terms by 4%, and those with the lowest incomes when this all started are among the worst hit, with fewer savings and less financial room to manoeuvre.
How can startups help? Digital tools can only do so much, and you may be tired of downloading yet another app or signing up for another web portal, but with a bit of effort you can save real money. Here’s how.
Make switching easier
As many companies stop mailing paper bills in favour of digital updates, it’s easy to miss key information such as increases, end-of-contract warnings and subscription continuations.
That’s where Nous wants to help (nous.co). This new app pulls in your bills data from your inbox, analyses it via AI and makes suggestions of where to switch tariffs, providers and the like, as well as warning you when a contract is up or a subscription is about to be extended. When Nous spots a better deal, it lets you know when to make the switch and uses open banking tools to automate as much of the process as possible. “It’s an intelligent agent that manages your bills,” said Greg Marsh, co-founder and CEO. “Nous sits in your pocket reading this for you.”
He added: “Lots of people are on top of [their bills] – and well done them. But this is for the rest of us.”
The idea for Nous came during the pandemic, when Marsh got a call from an energy provider about overpaying. He had plenty time on his hands to talk through the various options and research alternative suppliers, but realised that usually isn’t the case. “I had this sense that this was all wrong,” he said. So he set about building a “consumer champion” app, made possible by the arrival of open banking as well as large-language AI models, which Nous makes extensive use of to read through bill data. “It�
