Goldfish Bank continues to make progress, and during the year we concentrated on building awareness of Goldfish as a financial services provider, rather than simply a credit card. Spontaneous awareness, which doubled to 12% by the end of the year, placed us towards the top end of the new banking brands.

The number of cards in force rose 6% to 1.08 million with 77,000 new accounts opened during the year. The average monthly spend on the Goldfish card increased by 14% against 2001, making it among the highest in the UK market. In the second half we started offering personal loans, attracting high quality applicants with a flexible product and no redemption penalties.

We attracted 11,000 applicants for our new internet savings account – half of them from new Goldfish customers.

In November we transferred our customers across to a new customer services system. This was a complex process involving the transfer of credit card records and their associated loyalty points.

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A new internet based savings account was launched during the year.

Retail energy

We are the leading supplier of energy in Ontario, marketing under the Direct Energy brand, and in May we entered the province’s electricity market, successfully converting around 500,000 pre-signed contracts on to supply on day one. In August, we acquired a further 212,000 customers in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania from the NewPower Company. We also entered the energy markets in Texas and by the end of the year we were serving 890,000 retail energy customers across the state.

The pace of organic growth in North America slowed in 2002 owing to a combination of legislative delays, political pressures and large wholesale price swings. However, we continue to lobby in support of market liberalisation, and we believe momentum will pick up again.

In November, the Ontario government decided to cap residential and small business prices below the market rate, effectively suspending competition until 2006. We are paid the difference between the capped and market prices as a subsidy which is protected until 2006. Further organic growth is unlikely until the subsidy expires so in the meantime we will focus on maximising sales to our customer base across the full range of gas and home services products.

We continue to look for opportunities to take over customers from companies who want to leave the retail market. In December we agreed to purchase ATCO’s retail energy business in Alberta subject to legislative changes and regulatory consents. This will give us about 820,000 gas and 160,000 electricity customers and provides a good starting point for introducing the benefits of unregulated energy and services packages.

Home and business services

We bought Enbridge Services Inc for £438 million in May 2002, but raised more than £300 million by selling some of our interests in the waterheater assets that came as part of the deal. However, we have retained relationships with around 1.3 million households as the exclusive provider of their waterheater installation and maintenance.

In Ontario we are a leading installer of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) and some 330,000 households have contracted with us for HVAC maintenance and protection plans.

Upstream gas

We continue developing our gas fields in Alberta, which supplied us with 24% of our sales to North American customers.

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The integration of Enbridge Services Inc has allowed us to broaden the range of products we offer to customers.

In Europe, we are focusing on countries where market liberalisation is most advanced. Through Luminus, our joint venture in Belgium, we now have about 18% of the electricity market above one gigawatt hour in Flanders, which opened for business in January 2002. In 2003 the residential and business markets will open fully for both electricity and gas.

In Spain we aim to enter the small and medium business sector and build organically, using the skills we have developed in other markets. We hope to open for business in the second quarter of 2003.

Δ% has been used to express ‘percentage change’
n/m has been used to represent ‘not meaningful’.

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