There are a multitude of services that Third-party intermediaries (Tpis) offer, and varying ways they obtain clients and earn remuneration. This means that choosing the right Tpi is essential.
It is now widely accepted that up to 70% of business energy procurement is facilitated by brokers and Tpis such as ourselves, but there is no official Ofgem license or even a voluntary code of conduct.
This is why the Utilities Intermediaries Association (UIA) exists – too many ‘rogue brokers’ were destroying companies’ confidence in using Tpis, so the UIA set out to “enhance the reputation of this sector of the industry and give confidence to those who seek to use their service”.
What many don’t realise however, is that there are many differences between the Tpis that do exist, even the ones accredited by the UIA.
We have been a member of the UIA since October 2009, as we feel it is important to let our customers know that we always operate in an honest and open way. We’re even happy to tell you the commission we are making, and the way we make it.
Some of our clients want to pay us a flat fee for our range of services, particularly public sector organisations. But we also offer our full range of business energy cost management services to all of our clients, whether we earn a commission on the unit rate or an introductory fee.
These services are always free, whether you need your energy bills checked, need your energy usage analysed, need help with supplier credit issues or even just want to ask a question about business energy, we’re here to help in any way we can.
In all cases, we only ever charge what we think our service is worth, and we pride ourselves in never ripping customers off. We want to build successful relationships with our clients for many years to come, so we can both prosper, that’s why we’ve always worked to a code of practice, even before we were members of the UIA.