Retail-Energy Regulatory Digital Portfolio Board Adviser

The mandate

The board keeps confronting the same unresolved choice: whether to accelerate a new digital acquisition and self-service proposition while billing corrections, hardship treatment and consent controls are still being rebuilt under regulatory commitments. Management presents growth, platform and remediation as separate portfolios, preventing directors from seeing which release dependencies could turn higher conversion into additional customer harm, stranded remediation or avoidable assisted-service demand.

The adviser will reserve the first Tuesday and third Thursday of each month as two remote evidence days, covering management-paper review, customer-journey demonstrations and a structured challenge session. Five scheduled Retail Transformation and Conduct Committee meetings, a sixty-minute monthly chair call and written responses to urgent questions within two Australian business days are included; additional ad-hoc work is capped at four hours monthly.

The initial appointment runs for ten months. During month eight, the board chair and committee chair will assess whether the standing question has been resolved; the full board alone may approve one two-month renewal at the existing retainer and cadence, creating an absolute twelve-month limit.

This is a source of challenge, not an operating appointment. The adviser has no line authority, cannot approve releases, regulatory attestations, customer remediation, suppliers or expenditure, and accepts no executive accountability. Named management owners make each decision and must record the evidence considered, the advice received and any reason for departing from it.

No more than two other significant advisory appointments may be carried during the term, and every actual or perceived conflict must be disclosed. A role with a competing Australian energy retailer, remuneration from the billing or digital-platform bidders, participation in a regulator matter involving this client, or a material investment tied to its technology choices may require recusal or termination.

Why the board wants this voice

Directors possess deep energy-market, regulatory and financial experience but lack a member who has led a large multi-market digital portfolio through simultaneous growth and mandatory change. Current papers report delivery confidence without reconciling acquisition, conversion, operational failure and conduct outcomes. The chair wants a practitioner who can interrogate portfolio evidence before the board approves the next release and funding tranche.

What you will own

• Press directors to define the evidence that must connect digital acquisition, completed onboarding, accurate billing, consent integrity and sustainable cost-to-serve before growth funding advances.
• Test whether regulatory commitments are expressed as observable journey controls with accountable technology owners, rather than policy statements detached from release decisions.
• Challenge portfolio sequencing where billing migration, customer-data remediation, hardship identification and new digital propositions compete for the same engineering or change capacity.
• Examine management’s conversion narrative against abandonment, repeat contact, manual adjustment, complaint, vulnerable-customer and payment-plan outcomes by cohort.
• Shape a board-level release challenge that distinguishes technical readiness, frontline operability, regulatory acceptance and residual conduct risk without replacing executive judgement.
• Probe cloud and platform plans for reversibility, data reconciliation, supplier dependence, incident recovery and the implications of market-specific rules across four states.
• Frame the questions, dissent and evidence gaps accompanying each material digital investment recommendation so the board’s rationale remains reconstructable after the term.

Candidate qualifications

• Led a regulated digital portfolio with annual investment above A$35 million across at least ten markets or business units, joining proposition growth and mandatory change in one governance system.
• Delivered measurable improvement in acquisition or conversion while retaining visibility of customer outcomes, assisted-channel demand and control exceptions that could invalidate the headline gain.
• Directed a cloud migration, core-platform renewal or large application consolidation whose risk posture was tested with compliance, operational and technology leaders across countries.
• Presented portfolio trade-offs directly to a board, executive risk committee or equivalent body and can show where challenge changed a release, investment or market-entry decision.
• Governed complex regulation-driven technology programmes with traceable obligations, evidence owners and independent assurance rather than treating the deadline as proof of compliance.
• Brings senior experience from financial services, telecommunications, transport or another high-volume regulated sector that can be translated honestly to retail energy without claiming energy expertise not held.

Non-negotiables

• Can protect both named monthly evidence days, all five committee meetings and the two-business-day response commitment throughout the ten-month term.
• Will disclose every relevant board seat, retainer, expert-network engagement, investment and technology-vendor relationship before receiving confidential materials.
• Accepts remote evidence access through secure client systems and will not request operational decision rights, management instructions or authority to speak for the retailer.
• Has personally governed a regulated digital portfolio of at least A$35 million or equivalent; broad transformation commentary without owned portfolio decisions is insufficient.

1. 49 words maximum. Which current appointments, investments or supplier relationships would need disclosure to this board, and what mitigation would you propose?
2. 49 words maximum. Describe a board decision where you connected digital conversion evidence with regulatory or operational harm and changed the resulting portfolio choice.
3. 49 words maximum. Confirm the stated remote cadence and explain how quickly you can review an urgent release or regulatory paper within the two-business-day requirement.