Switching energy supplier in GB has continued positively in October on the upward seasonal trend as suppliers see an expected rise in contract expirations.
October 2020 recorded 621,000 changes of supplier (CoS) completed, according to data from the Energy Market Data Hub (EMDH). This is four percent more than October 2019 as well as a 20 percent increase on September 2020.
This marks October 2020’s figures as the highest month so far this year, third highest month since records began, and the first time since April 2019 that a month’s CoS count has passed 600,000.
Cumulative CoS completed for the year so far sits at 5.1 million – three percent less than the same 10-month period last year.
However, switches started in October were still high, reaching 689,000 – two percent more than October 2019 but nine percent less than September 2020. In comparison, CoS started in October 2019 ranked five percent less than September 2019, indicating a wider gap may be on the cards for switches completed next month.
Although we only report CoS events that are not due to trade sales, SoLR processes or internal portfolio reallocations in our monthly switching updates, we thought it interesting to note that, including those CoS event types, over one million MPANs have been put into the CoS process in each of the past two months.
According to data showing CoS types, switches between challenger suppliers reached their highest ever. The Big Six continued to see losses to challengers as well as a decrease in switches amongst the Big Six players.
- Big Six to Big Six switches dropped to 124,000 – 18 percent less than October 2019 and 20 percent of October 2020’s total switches completed,
- Big Six to challenger switches reached 209,000 – 0.2 percent more than October 2019 and 34 percent of October 2020’s total switches completed,
- Challenger to Big Six switches landed at 95,000 – five percent less than October 2019 and 15 percent of October 2020’s total switches completed,
- And challenger to challenger switches reached 193,000 – 38 percent more than October 2019 and 31 percent of October 2020’s total switches completed.
For more information on CoS figures, contact [email protected]. If you would like access to the CoS data we hold and analysis we provide for the energy market, please reach out to [email protected].
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NOTES:
The above figures relate to electricity CoS in Great Britain only.
We do not include CoS from Supplier of Last Resort (SoLR) processes or trade sales in our monthly CoS reporting. We account for only voluntary switches, or instances where the customer made an active decision and took action to change supplier.
CoS started refers to the number of valid switches started, also known as CoS raised.
All data is provided by ElectraLink’s Energy Market Insights (EMI) from the EMDH.
ElectraLink has been granted the governance protections to hold, transfer and analyse CoS and other data.