The British utility Centrica lost 823,000 customers between June and October 2017 and in total around 1.2m customers over the last nine months, which is around 6% of its customer accounts between July and October and 8% since the beginning of 2017. In particular, 150,000 customers exited after the company raised its tariffs in September 2017. The current customer account now stands at 13.1m, meaning Centrica remains the market leader even after its contenders npower and SSE merged to create a new company with 11.5m accounts.
The difficulties Centrica is facing are representative of the Big Six's situation. They currently regroup around 50m customers but their market shares have been eroded in favor of independent power producers (IPPs) and no less than sixty suppliers now propose offers on the UK market, which is changing very quickly: in the first half of 2017, eight new companies joined the market and in October 2017 only, around 600,000 British households opted for a new supplier.