The new year has brought FCVic’s focus to several new projects while we continue our ongoing work in small business wellbeing and disaster recovery. Below are some details about our new projects, which we are excited to share!
Rank the Energy Retailer 2025
We have now started work on Rank the Energy Retailer 2025, a collaborative project to assess the hardship practices of energy retailers across Australia. FCVic will soon be inviting our members to share their views on energy retailer practices through a survey in March—thank you in advance for your valuable insights!
As background, in late 2024, FCVic was pleased to receive funding for this project from Energy Consumers Australia as part of its Grants Program, which supports consumer advocacy and research projects that benefit household and small business consumers. In this project, FCVic is working closely with the Consumer Policy Research Centre, Financial Counselling Australia, and our project funder, Energy Consumers Australia, to design and develop a survey for financial counsellors across Australia to assess energy retailers’ approaches to hardship.
The project builds on previous FCVic reports ranking the hardship practices of Victorian energy retailers and will take a national approach similar to Financial Counselling Australia’s Rank the Banks report. Importantly, this project also includes Energy Consumers Australia’s analysis of regulatory data, which will strengthen the survey data insights and the report’s findings. The Rank the Energy Retailer 2025 project is supervised by a reference group with representatives from national community organisations, several state peak financial counselling bodies, and FCVic’s project partners.
We are excited to hear what financial counsellors across Australia have to say about their clients’ experiences with energy retailers. The results will be published in a final report in June 2025. As the peak body for Victorian financial counsellors, FCVic will invite our members to complete the Rank the Energy Retailer survey for the Victorian energy market—so watch this space! In March, please take the time to complete the survey.
Workforce Development Project
FCVic is delighted to have received funding from Consumer Affairs Victoria to develop a workforce development strategy for the financial counselling profession in Victoria. This funding was announced by Minister for Consumer Affairs Nick Staikos on 22 January 2025.
The Workforce Development Project sees FCVic working with specialist consultants to create a workforce development strategy for the financial counselling sector in Victoria over the next 10 years. This will ensure that our workforce—from students to highly experienced, accredited financial counsellors—is professionally supported and that the sector can grow sustainably to meet increasing community needs.
This project is steered by a committee of experienced financial counsellors, agency managers, and representatives from community organisations, who bring a wealth of experience across the community sector to guide our consultants’ work in developing this important strategy. In addition to the broader workforce development strategy, the project includes the development of caseload guidelines for financial counsellors and an evaluation of the economic benefits and impacts of financial counselling.
FCVic will seek our members’ views on caseload guidelines and workforce development through our member survey, to be released in February. Along with our consultants, we will also seek input from agency managers and financial counsellor team members to better understand client outcomes and the benefits and impacts of financial counselling on the community.
We highly value our members’ contributions, and your insights over the next month will be vital in shaping the workforce strategy for the Victorian financial counselling profession over the next 10 years.
Please direct any questions to Georgina Molloy at [email protected].