The Association of British Travel Agents, ABTA, is delighted at the Treasury`s announcement on the outcome of the consultation on insurance…
The Association of British Travel Agents, ABTA, is delighted at the Treasury`s announcement on the outcome of the consultation on insurance. As a result, ABTA will continue to regulate its members over the sale of travel insurance.
The ruling is in line with the European Parliament Insurance Mediation Directive, from 2002, which excluded travel insurance, when sold with other travel arrangements, from blanket regulation.
Many travel companies will be saved thousands of pounds a year in the extra costs of statutory regulation, which, for small and medium sized companies may have caused many to have given up selling travel insurance altogether. Now, consumers will continue to have a range of choices on the high street.
We are delighted that the Treasury has accepted the arguments we put forward during the consultation, says Ian Reynolds, ABTA Chief Executive. There is no evidence of systematic mis-selling of travel insurance by travel businesses, but we are looking forward to working with the FSA constructively. ABTA is keen that its members will continue to be the best place to purchase travel insurance and so we have already developed a new training package which will be launched later this year.
Backround
Recently, there has been a lot of misinformation circulating about the travel insurance issue, often encouraged by those who have an interest in squeezing travel agents out of the insurance market.
In fact, the vast majority of consumers, who buy their travel policies from a travel agent, are satisfied with the service they receive.
- The number of consumer complaints on the sales of travel insurance is low. Over 18 million travel policies are sold annually but less than 884 complaints a year reach the Financial Services` Ombudsman. Of these, a tiny proportion are about sales by travel agents.
- ABTA`s own Consumer Department handles over 18,000 holiday complaints a year and under one per cent are about travel insurance.
- ABTA has successfully worked with travel insurance issues for 40 years. It is a requirement of the ABTA Code of Conduct that customers are asked about pre-existing medical conditions, only sold policies that are appropriate for their destination or activities and given proper documentation concerning the cover provided. Along with the new training package the Code will be further strengthened to improve standards.
- It was against this background that ABTA believed that the further regulation of travel agents by the FSA would be inappropriate and disproportionate.
- ABTA (The Association of British Travel Agents) successfully challenged the proposed rules of the General Insurance Standards Council (GISC) in a landmark decision of the Competition Commission Appeal Tribunal concluded on Monday 17 September 2001.
- The insurance market is worth a total of
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
