It's good question, as there are approximately over 2,000 registered energy brokers in the UK. The traditional approach involves a phone, cold calling and a lot of documents back and forward. This segment tends to focus on bigger companies that consumes well over 100,000 kWh per year (gas and electrcity) and they coupon clip (make fees) everywhere they can. They do an uplift (commission) to the kWh price to the customer and get kickback from the supplier. Some even manage to charge the UK business monthly or annual service fees for monitoring their energy consumption. The new guard of Energy Brokers have embraced techonology to a certain degree and focus on more volume and approach UK businesses that consume over 50,000 kWh per year. Sometimes they do take an uplift but generally only make money from kickback from Energy suppliers. Many of these new guard players offer UK companies everything from water utilities to payment terminals, essentially anything you can broker (contracts that are easy to switch). Some that stand out are Yuenergy, Utility Bidder and Love Energy Savings (website links are below).
Finally there are pure digital brokers like Moneysupermarket, Comparethemarket and Uswitchforbusiness (website links below). Altough they have embraced full digitasation, their data forms are length and takes time to fill in and they try and take every single data point they have so that they can capitalise on you later. They make money on fees from suppliers and additional agreements with certain Energy Suppliers. They will favour certain suppliers for how much they are paid and be sure they will not be unbiased.
All in all it is not easy to choose the best one but be sure to be careful to read the fineprint and dont be afraid to ask how they make money and if they are unbiased in their offering and if they really offer the whole UK energy market. Always ask for the top 3 best energy qoutes and why they are the cheapest and on what basis? Is it cost per kWh (unit charge), standing charge etc. What is the contract period and when can you renew your contract again.
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