Price cap increase results in March switching boost

Electralink says the price cap increase resulted in an almost record month for electricity switches in March, falling just short of the previous record set in 2019.

March 2021 saw the second highest number of switches ever in a single month after 649,000 customers made a move, just 20,000 short of the record 669,000 in April 2019.

Furthermore, last month’s figures were 10 per cent more than March last year when the UK’s first coronavirus lockdown began.

A new record was set in terms of the number of switches started. In total 884,000 switches were begun which is the highest ever in a single month, exceeding March 2020 by 24 per cent and March 2019 – the previous record month – by 15 per cent.

In terms of changes of supplier (CoS) types:

• Large to large reached 341,000 – 18 per cent more than March 2020 and 53 per cent of March 2021’s total switches completed
• Large to other reached 177,000 – 34 per cent more than March 2020 and 27 per cent of March 2021’s total switches
• Other to large was 72,000 – 25 per cent less than March 2020 and 11 per cent of March 2021’s total switches completed
• Other to other hit 59,000 – equivalent to March 2020 and 9 per cent of March 2021’s total switches completed

Electralink added that it believes April’s switches completed will be similar to the numbers in March.

Dan Hopkinson, Electralink’s acting chief executive, said: “In February’s CoS update, we predicted a spike in switching in spring after Ofgem’s announcement of an increase to the standard variable tariff price cap owing to high wholesale electricity prices.

“Queries running through one of our application programming interfaces (APIs) have jumped into the millions recently, forewarning us of the likelihood of increased switching activity well before the trend started.

“Validation of this prediction with data from the Energy Market Data Hub demonstrates the power of data to monitor market activity.”