Embargoed until 06:00 BST, Thursday 20 July

Cost-of-living start-up launches new AI assistant to make sense of household bills

Cost-of-living start-up Nous.co today launches a new AI-powered assistant that saves users money, time and stress by making sense of household bills.

The assistant uses generative AI to automatically categorise and summarise bills, alerting customers to important details and saving opportunities. 

Users can upload documents one-by-one, or connect their inbox so relevant bills are forwarded to Nous the moment they arrive, allowing the intelligent assistant to take on the hassle of catching billing issues and flagging them before they become a problem. 

Some two thirds of people in the UK report finding it difficult to understand their energy bills, according to Nous research, and just 15% say they always read the small print. 

By identifying key details from bills and contracts, Nous can save households up to £1,000 a year or more. The company’s automated money-saving service, which is now live after more than 12 months of development in private beta, handles all the admin of switching people to fairer deals.

For instance, the AI tool can tell users within seconds whether their household could save on their energy (most can save £126, some considerably more). It’s then just a couple of clicks to have Nous make the switch.

Nous can also spot suppliers’ attempts to sneak through unwelcome surprises, such as estimated bills.

Nous AI insights will improve over time based on user feedback as more households join the hundreds of thousands of users who have already signed up.

Greg Marsh, co-founder and CEO of Nous, said: “Our new AI-powered intelligent assistant provides instant savings for families reeling from the soaring cost of living.

“We know most people find trawling through every line of their bills boring, confusing, worrying – or all three. It’s such a problem that in reality most of us just don’t do it.

“Unfortunately companies are all too aware of this, and some use it as an opportunity to bury nasty surprises where they think no one will actually read them. Generative AI is perfectly suited to catching this stuff straight away, saving the need for Nous users to sacrifice hours to ensure they’re not getting ripped off.”

The new feature, which is included as part the free tier of Nous membership, currently works with energy bills and will shortly be rolled out next to other categories such as broadband, mobile phone and insurance documents, and will see alerts delivered via WhatsApp. 

Nous protects customer data with 256-bit bank-grade encryption (the same level of security as a bank), and is fully compliant with the ICO, the UK’s data privacy body.

Ends

Editors notes

Covid, a baby and hanging on the telephone: How Nous was born

Greg Marsh had better things to do in March 2020 than wait on hold with British Gas. His wife was due any day with their second child, for starters. But they’d been ‘accidentally’ moved onto a more expensive energy tariff, and now he was into hour number seven trying to fix it.

Being tortured by Coldplay on loop, Greg wondered which other bills they’d been neglecting – broadband, mobile, TV, insurance, mortgage – and how much could it be costing.

By the time he finished wading through them all, Greg had a splitting headache. But at least he’d found thousands of pounds of savings.

In fact, Greg had caught COVID. While he lay in bed shivering, his wife went into labour. At home on his own in the darkness, he waited anxiously for news from the hospital. Then, finally, the phone rang. It was British Gas.

That’s when it hit him. Life’s too important to be battling big companies all alone in the dark. When we’re isolated, the odds are stacked against us. But what if you could find enough people who felt the same, ready to do something about it?

About Nous

Nous is an intelligent assistant that saves people money on their bills and household services including energy, broadband and mobile, finding fair deals for its members and handling all the hassle of changing providers.

The company was founded by a team of experienced entrepreneurs and is headed by household finance expert Greg Marsh, a former VC at Index Ventures and the founder of onefinestay.

Nous keeps track of when contracts end and when new deals emerge, ensuring members always pay fair prices and aren’t hit by loyalty penalties.

Unlike switching and price comparison sites which make their money through commissions and kickbacks, Nous gives any money earned via commissions back to its members in the form of monthly rewards. This means it is able to maintain a strict commitment to neutrality, and also saves Nous members hundreds pounds a year more.

Nous has raised $10million in seed funding from leading entrepreneurs and investors including Tom Blomfield (co-founder of GoCardless & Monzo), Marc Warner (co-founder & CEO of AI pioneer Faculty.ai), Dan Hegarty (founder & CEO of leading digital mortgage company Habito), Eamon Jubbawy (co-founder of fintech unicorn Onfido) and Brent Hoberman (founder of Founders Forum). Mosaic Ventures and Chalfen Ventures also participated.

Nous is a B-Corp pending business, and has used its growing public profile during the cost-of-living crisis to raise awareness of social issues. As part of the company’s commitment to make a positive social impact, it has driven initiatives such as campaigns to increase the uptake of broadband social tariffs, and to crack down on telecoms companies' unfair mid-contract price hikes.

The company was started in 2021 and launched in beta earlier this year.