Significantly more energy customers said they were in the process of switching or were looking to do so in October than earlier in the pandemic, Ofgem has found.
The regulator began measuring the impacts of Covid-19 social distancing on domestic energy consumption, financial wellbeing and the concerns of energy consumers around managing bills in April this year.
Recent figures from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) revealed the number of customers switching their gas or electricity supply in the second quarter of 2020 fell to a two-year low. In Q2, the number of switches in electricity was down 13.1 per cent year-on-year while gas saw a slump of 20.7 per cent on the same period in 2019.
However Ofgem’s latest report found that in October, 12 per cent of consumers were in the process of switching or actively looking for a new supplier, a significant increase from 10 per cent in May.
Furthermore, around a quarter of all customers (23 per cent) are thinking about switching.
Younger people aged 16-24 are the group most likely to be thinking about switching (32 per cent) or actively looking/ in the process (29 per cent).
Almost half (49 per cent) of consumers in the 16-34 bracket said they would only consider moving to a large well-known supplier while those aged 35 and above tended to be neutral (31 per cent) or disagree (44 per cent) with this statement.