Suppliers in the Other category, with market share of less than five percent per supplier, enjoyed a fruitful month of switching in April. CoS to Other suppliers from Large (market share of five percent or more) competitors reached 209,000 – narrowly increasing from the previous record for this category set in April 2019.

Our Energy Market Insights (EMI) experts note that within the Other category, Small suppliers (with less than one percent market share each) performed the best, with Medium suppliers (market share of between one and five percent) matching the overall trend of a slight decline on March’s total.

These 209,000 switches represent a significant portion of the 623,000 switches that occurred in April 2021.

  • Large to Large CoS reached 288,000 – 35 percent more than April 2020 and 46 percent of April 2021’s total switches completed,
  • Large to Other CoS reached 209,000 – 61 percent more than April 2020 and 34 percent of April 2021’s total switches completed,
  • Other to Large CoS landed at 66,000 – 14 percent less than April 2020 and 11 percent of April 2021’s total switches completed, and
  • Other to Other CoS hit 60,000 – two percent less than April 2020 and 10 percent of April 2021’s total switches completed.

The total of 623,000 switches completed is seven percent less than the record for a single month achieved in April 2019. However, it is still 29 percent more than April last year when the pandemic had its most severe impact on CoS activity and ranks April 2021 in the top five months for switches completed. The high number of switches that carried through into April was all due to the record number of CoS started in March.

April’s switches started reached 564,000 and increased by 15 percent compared to last year, although that was also when the pandemic had severely depressed switching activity.

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 EMI from the EMDH.

ElectraLink has been granted the governance protections to hold, transfer and analyse CoS and other data.