Ofgem’s letter to BEIS requesting increased power’s to address brokers mis-selling to small businesses, and outlined in a leading Sunday broadsheet over the weekend, serves to further highlight that action is required in this currently unregulated area of the retail market.
On Thursday 27 July, ElectraLink hosted a call to participants across the industry, setting out our vision for the development and launch of an industry Third Party Intermediary Code of Practice, with recommendations for its establishment by January 2019. The TPI Code of Practice is a set of standards that sets the benchmark for responsible, high quality TPIs selling energy to small businesses.
The call was well attended by suppliers, TPIs and third party independent organsiations who were provided with an overview of the underpinning principles of the code, intended approach to governance and assurance and an overview of working group terms and conditions.
The TPICoP working group is likely to be established in the coming weeks, with workshops currently in the pipeline and scheduled for September and October of this year.
Having identified what we believe is a key requirement in the energy market, we are ensuring that the establishment of the TPICoP is open to membership from suppliers, TPIs and independent third parties across the industry. We believe this is critical to ensuring that the governance of the TPICoP is fully transparent. By engaging across the industry we intend to ensure that the TPICoP is appropriately governed and assured and more importantly consistent with the other services which ElectraLink has been delivering to industry for the last 20-years.
If you missed the call, would like to find out more, discuss specific elements of our proposed approach in further detail or wish to become a working group member please make contact with the team via [email protected].