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News

6 million customers switch electricity supplier in 2020

Energy UK’s latest electricity switching figures show that six million customers (5,953,520) switched supplier in 2020.

Switching levels were down slightly (by 6.5%) on 2019, which was a record year for switching seeing 6.4 million customers changing supplier, but were up (by 1.3%) on switching levels in 2018.

Half a million customers (496,127) customers on average still moved to a new supplier every month in 2020.

In the final month of 2020, 464,449 customers switched electricity supplier, down 10.6% compared to December 2019.

Emma Pinchbeck, Energy UK’s chief executive, said:

“During a year when everyone’s attention has, unsurprisingly, been on other issues, it’s encouraging to see six million customers changing supplier in 2020 and benefitting from the products and services on offer.

“As we settle into a new year, there’s no time like the present for customers to get in touch with their supplier and check they’re on the right tariff for them or shop around for a better deal.

“However, the best way to save on energy bills in the long term is to improve the energy efficiency of your home. This can save hundreds of pounds and make homes more comfortable to live in – all while cutting our contribution to climate change.”

Notes to editors:

  • To see the latest monthly switching stats, please visit Energy UK’s website.
  • The rise in switching figures over last few years has been as follows:

  • From December 2020, larger suppliers in the market are British Gas, Bulb, EDF Energy, E.ON (including npower), Octopus Energy, OVO (including domestic business of SSE) and Scottish Power. This is based on Ofgem’s revised definition of classifying all suppliers with a market share of 5% or above in either fuel as larger.
  • Gemserv Limited is the service company contracted by the MRA Service Company (MRASCo) to provide services in support of the MRA including the management of its governance and providing specialised expertise to MRASCo in support of the growing electricity retail market. Historical data up to August 2018 was provided by Electralink.
  • The data referenced in these reports is for electricity only. These figures include both domestic (Profile Classes 1 and 2) & non-domestic customers (Profile Classes 3-8 and 0) but do not include customers transferred to another supplier as a result of the Supplier of Last Resort process (SOLR). Also, any switches between merged parties are considered as internal and are not counted in our switching statistics.
  • These figures do not include internal electricity switching. Such statistics can be found on the Ofgem website.