Start with how they get paid

Most business energy brokers don’t charge you a fee directly. They’re paid a commission by the supplier, and that commission is usually built into the unit rate you pay for electricity or gas. So the headline price you’re quoted already has the broker’s earnings folded in. There’s nothing wrong with that arrangement. It’s how the bulk of the market works. The problem is when nobody tells you it’s happening.

Ask the broker, in plain words, how they make their money. A broker who works on commission should be able to tell you the rate they’re adding, often expressed in pence per kilowatt hour or as a total over the contract term. If the answer is vague, or you get a quick reassurance that “it doesn’t cost you anything,” push harder. It does cost you something. It’s in your rate.

We’ve written about this directly on our own how we make our money page, because we’d rather you ask us than wonder.

Pin down what “in your rate” actually means

Commission isn’t a single number that applies the same way everywhere. On a longer contract it gets spread across more units, so a small-sounding per-unit figure can add up to a sizeable total over three or four years. A broker quoting you a five-year deal with a generous commission baked in might look competitive on day one and cost you considerably more by the end.

Get the figure in writing and do the arithmetic yourself. Your annual consumption multiplied by the commission rate, multiplied by the contract length, gives you the real cost of using that broker. For a business getting through 80,000 kWh a year, a commission of half a penny per unit is £400 a year, or £1,200 over three years. Not ruinous. Worth knowing before you sign.

A broker comfortable with this conversation will walk you through it. One who’d rather move on to closing the deal has answered the question without meaning to.

Ask how many suppliers they really compare

“Whole-of-market” is one of those phrases that sounds like a guarantee and often isn’t. Some brokers do compare a genuinely wide panel. Others work with a handful of suppliers they have agreements with, and “whole-of-market” stretches to mean “every supplier we happen to deal with.” Those are very different things.

So ask the direct question. How many suppliers do you compare, and which ones? A confident broker will name them, or tell you roughly how large their panel is. You might hear twenty, you might hear six. The number matters less than whether they’ll tell you at all. The breadth of the panel decides how much of the market your quote actually reflects.

Watch for the broker who only ever seems to recommend the same one or two suppliers. There can be good reasons for that. There can also be a commercial arrangement you’re not being told about. If every business that walks through the door ends up with the same supplier, the comparison wasn’t doing much work. You can get a feel for genuine breadth by running your own numbers through our business energy price comparison and seeing whether the broker’s recommendation lands in a sensible range.

Read what they put in writing before you sign anything

The letter of authority is the document people skim past. It’s the one that matters most. Signing it lets the broker talk to suppliers on your behalf, pull your consumption data, and in some cases agree contracts in your name. That last part is where businesses get caught out.

Read the scope. A reasonable letter of authority lets the broker gather information and negotiate. It shouldn’t give them the power to sign you into a contract without your explicit say-so. If the wording allows a broker to commit you to a new deal on their own judgement, that’s too much authority to hand over to someone you met last week. Ask for it to be limited to information-gathering and quotes, with the final signature staying with you.

Check how long the authority lasts and how you cancel it. Some brokers write a letter of authority that quietly rolls on for years, which means they keep access to your account long after the job’s done. You want a clear end date or a simple way to withdraw it.

Look at the contract terms, not the headline rate

The unit rate gets all the attention because it’s the number you can compare easily. The terms around it are where the real differences hide. Two contracts at the same price can behave very differently depending on what’s written into the small print.

Look at the contract length and whether there’s a price review clause that lets the supplier adjust rates mid-term. Check the termination terms and the notice window. Some contracts need you to give notice months in advance, and if you miss it you’re rolled onto expensive out-of-contract rates without realising. Ask whether the rate is fully fixed or whether standing charges and pass-through costs can move.

A good broker explains these things without being asked, because they know that’s where a business gets stung six months down the line. If yours only talks about the headline rate, you’re being sold a price, not a contract. If you want the groundwork on how brokers operate before you weigh any of this up, our explainer on what an energy broker does covers the basics.

Find out what happens after you sign

Plenty of brokers are very attentive right up to the moment your signature lands, then disappear. The deal’s done, the commission’s locked in, and you don’t hear from them again until your renewal comes around and the cycle repeats. For a one-off switch that might be fine. For a business that wants its energy managed properly, it isn’t enough.

Ask what the relationship looks like once you’re under contract. Will anyone monitor your renewal date and flag it before you drift onto out-of-contract rates? Is there a named contact if a bill looks wrong or a meter reading goes haywire? Do they keep an eye on the market during your contract in case something changes that’s worth acting on?

This is the difference between a broker and a salesperson. A salesperson is finished when you sign. A broker who manages your account treats the signature as the start. For a multi-site business especially, ongoing account management is often worth more than a fractionally better rate on day one. We go into this distinction in more detail in our piece on using a broker versus going direct.

Red flags worth walking away from

Some behaviour tells you everything before you’ve checked a single document. The hard sell is the obvious one. If a broker is pushing you to sign today because the rate “won’t be available tomorrow,” they’re using urgency to stop you thinking. Wholesale prices move, sure, but a legitimate quote isn’t going to evaporate in an afternoon. That pressure exists to close you, not to help you.

Be wary of anyone promising the cheapest rate or guaranteed savings. Nobody can promise that honestly, because nobody controls the wholesale market. A broker who leads with “we’ll get you the cheapest deal” is either being careless with language or hoping you won’t check. The good ones talk about competitive pricing and what suits your business, not superlatives they can’t back up.

Vagueness about pay is the third. You’ve already asked how they’re paid. If the answer keeps sliding around, that’s not shyness, it’s avoidance. A broker who won’t be straight about their own commission is unlikely to be straight about much else.

None of these on its own proves bad faith. Together, they’re a pattern. Trust your read on it. If the conversation feels like being sold to rather than advised, it probably is.

A quick word on legitimacy checks

Everything above is about judgement. Is this broker working for me, and will they do a good job? There’s a separate layer underneath that, which is whether the broker is a genuine, accountable business at all. That covers things like checking they’re registered at Companies House, that they belong to a dispute resolution scheme so you’ve got somewhere to go if things sour, and that they’re not a cold-caller who’s harvested your details.

Those checks deserve more room than a paragraph, so we’ve put them in their own guide. Before you sign with anyone, it’s worth running through how to check an energy broker is legitimate. The selection questions in this guide assume you’re already dealing with a real, reputable firm. That guide helps you confirm it.

Putting it together

Choosing a broker comes down to a handful of honest questions and how comfortably they get answered. How do you make your money, and what’s in my rate. How many suppliers do you compare. What exactly am I signing, and what does it let you do. What happens after the switch. You don’t need to be an energy expert to ask any of them.

The broker who answers all five without flinching is the one worth working with. The one who deflects, rushes, or promises the world is telling you how the relationship would go. You learn most of what you need to know in the first conversation, if you’re listening for it.

If you’d like to see how we handle those questions ourselves, our business energy service is built around answering them up front rather than waiting to be asked.