Business energy brokers: how the market works, and how to grow one.

A business electricity broker sits between a non-domestic customer and the supplier market. The sequence is consistent across the sector: a Letter of Authority is signed, the broker pulls supply detail from the MPAN or MPRN and the current contract, twelve months of consumption or an EAC/AQ figure is established, and pricing is requested across whichever suppliers hold that customer’s credit profile and meter type.

The part customers rarely see is normalisation. One supplier returns a fully fixed price, another passes network and policy charges through at cost, a third quotes a fixed commodity with pass-through third-party costs. Presenting those side by side as three p/kWh numbers is meaningless. The work a good commercial electricity broker does is turning them into a like-for-like comparison the customer can actually decide on — the mechanics of which are set out in our business energy comparison guide.

The dominant model is an uplift: a small addition to the unit rate, collected by the supplier and paid to the broker across the contract term. Fee-based and hybrid models exist, particularly on large half-hourly and multi-site portfolios where a flat management fee is cleaner than an uplift on volume. None of these are inherently better or worse; what matters is whether the arrangement is disclosed and whether the customer can see the uplift expressed in p/kWh.

For the broker, the commercial consequence is that revenue is earned over years and renewal retention decides profitability. That is why the marketing that works in this sector is built around contract-end dates rather than generic acquisition campaigns.

Third Party Intermediary is the regulatory umbrella. Business energy brokers place contracts. Energy consultants advise on procurement strategy and may never place one. Bureau providers handle validation and reporting on bills already in place. Many firms do two or three of these, which is exactly why a site that describes itself only as “business energy solutions” loses the searcher looking for one specific capability.

Bought data is the default and the trap. A lead sold to five brokers converts like a lead sold to five brokers. The alternative is owned flow, and it has four parts: a site structured around desk types — SME, half-hourly, deemed rate, multi-site — so a visitor can self-select in seconds; search visibility on renewal, out-of-contract and deemed-rate intent rather than domestic switcher volume; paid media qualified on supply-number capture instead of form fills; and CRM discipline that surfaces a renewal ninety days before the out-of-contract window rather than after it.

Those four are the services we build: broker website design, business energy SEO, paid media and lead generation.