Monthly electricity switches drop to lowest level since 2012

The number of requests for a change of electricity supplier was the lowest on record last month due to the continuing crisis gripping the energy market, new figures have revealed.

Electralink’s latest statistics for October show only 232,000 energy switches were begun last month – 67% less than in October last year and the fewest in a calendar month since the company began collecting the data in 2012.

The lowest previous low for change of supplier requests was in June 2014 when 240,000 were started.

Multiple energy supplier failures were cited as being the key reason behind the decline, with price comparison websites having either limited options available or halting their services altogether.

Although September saw 723,000 changes of suppliers started, the number of switches completed in October was only around 435,000 – 31% less than the same month last year and the lowest October number since 2015.

Electralink explained that October usually returns a high number of completions due to annual contract cycles, but that the exits of small suppliers from the market have impacted the ability for voluntary switches to be completed.

Furthermore, a chart published by the company showed how despite some record months, the overall trend over the last three years – as indicated by the moving average in blue – has been a slow decline.

The movement towards larger and more established players reported in September’s figures continued in October:

• Large to large CoS reached 240,000 – 5% less than October 2020 and 55% of October 2021’s total switches completed.
• Large to other CoS reached 60,000 – 67% fewer than October last year and 14% of October 2021’s total switches completed.
• Other to large CoS landed at 94,000 – 1% more than October 2020 and 22% of October 2021’s total switches completed.
• Other to Other CoS hit 42,000 – 58% less than the previous October and 10% of last month’s total switches completed.

Electralink’s energy market insights analysts have predicted that switches completed in November will be the lowest on record.

Supplier of last resort process

So far this year a total of 22 energy retailers have exited the market via the supplier of last resort (SoLR) process, leaving more than 2.5 million domestic customers to be picked up by another supplier.

Electralink said while it does not typically include switches via the SoLR process, the state of the retail market may warrant an update to its approach.

It added: “Due to the high frequency of small supplier exits and their customers being moved into the SoLR process, more MPANs/customers went through the CoS process in October 2021 than any previous month on our records.

“Including SoLR switches, some internal switches (i.e. between IDs that form part of the same company group) and voluntary switches, a total of 1.4 million customers moved between suppliers in one month.”