I was interested to read in a recent article (Backchat, 30 August) that a survey commissioned by Sainsbury’s Bank found that “3.56 million people had fallen victim to dubious sales practices” when purchasing insurance from travel agents.
Can this really be so? I would assume that the Financial Services Ombudsman (FOS) would be swamped with complaints if this were true.
While I accept that some travel agents may mis-sell travel insurance from time to time,
I suspect that the number is no greater or smaller than any other segment of the industry.
The FOS reported 1,525 complaints in 2005 from all sources in the travel insurance sector.
While this represented an increase of 96% compared to the figures in 2001 it pales into insignificance against the 320% increase in complaints for the insurance industry overall.
We won’t argue against the fact that mis-selling occurs occasionally, but it would appear from these figures that the travel insurance sector as a whole, whether regulated or not, is performing better than the average.
John Peters
Voyager Insurance Services
Guildford
