New entrants energy market share climbs to 12.6 percent

Independent suppliers now hold 12.6 per cent of the dual fuel energy market after rapid growth in the last six months.

New data from independent market intelligence service Cornwall Energy has revealed that independents have gained 2 percentage points in the last six months, eroding the big six’s market share from 89.3 percent last October to 87.4 percent at the end of April.

This represents a drop of 4.8 percent year on year.

Independent supplier First Utility said the drop highlights “increasing dissatisfaction among consumers with the incumbents and a growing realisation of the huge savings available from switching.”

First Utility, the UK’s largest independent supplier, is also revealed by the data to be the fastest growing after it gained 0.3 percent of the market in the last three months alone, or 55,000 dual-fuel customers, taking its market share to 3.8 percent.

First Utility’s chief customer officer Ed Kamm said: “The growth of independent suppliers in the energy market is a significant achievement, but there is still much further to go with huge savings available to consumers if they make the switch.

“There are still 40 percent who have never switched and a large swathe of big six customers on standard variable tariffs that are collectively overspending by billions.”

Last week fellow independent supplier Ovo Energy suggested that independent growth could have been higher in this period. It blamed a “strategy change” by the big six through the introduction of ‘loss-leading acquisition tariffs’ for a slow-down in independent growth in its submission to the Competition and Markets Authority.

Energy UK revealed that more than 1.5 million electricity customers have switched supplier so far in 2015.