Changes of supplier (CoS) in the energy market remained low in March as the sector continues to struggle with high prices and supplier failures.

108,000 customers switched supplier in March 2022 – 83 percent less than March last year. However, the post-festive season trend in growing switching rates meant 13 percent more switches completed in March than February 2022.

A bumper period for households submitting meter readings to their supplier coincided with the latest increase in Ofgem’s standard variable tariff price cap on 1 April.

Meter Reading Day on 31 March turned out to be a successful campaign: 5.7mn domestic meter readings from smart and non-smart meters were submitted to suppliers in the 48 hours of 31 March-1 April. This is twice as many as the same days last year and helped millions of households to avoid being charged new price cap rates for energy used prior to the price cap increase.

News of the increasing price cap pushed many customers to search for other tariffs as ElectraLink’s APIs – which provide consumption and meter data through several market-leading price comparison websites (PCWs) – recorded 50 percent more calls/requests for data from PCWs in March 2022 compared to March last year.

As a result, 174,000 switches started in March 2022 – 81 percent less than March 2021 but 22 percent more than February 2022. Based on this figure, and the switches started in April at the time of writing, ElectraLink’s analysts forecast approximately 127,000 switches will complete in April 2022.

In terms of switching types, relative change in trends was flat in March compared to February 2022. The highest proportion of switches occurred between large suppliers. After ElectraLink analysts further interrogated the data, it emerged that switching between Large legacy suppliers (a.k.a former Big Six) decreased while there was a rise in switching from Large legacy to new Large suppliers.

  • Large to Large switches reached 62,000 – 12 percent more than February 2022 and 57 percent of March 2022’s total switches completed,
  • Large to Other switches reached 22,000 – 20 percent more than February 2022 and 20 percent of March 2022’s total switches completed,
  • Other to Large switches landed at 17,000 – 7 percent more than February 2022 and 16 percent of March 2022’s total switches completed,
  • And Other to Other switches hit 8,000 – 15 percent more than February 2022 and 7 percent of March 2022’s total switches completed.

For more information on CoS figures, or to find out how your organisation can access the CoS data we hold and provide for the energy market, contact [email protected].

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NOTES:

The above figures relate to electricity CoS in Great Britain only.

We do not include CoS from 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 switching data solution, SwitchTrack.

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