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Holidaymakers have been falling victim to misleading insurance-selling tactics by travel agents, according to a poll in the UK.

Published: 05 Jan 2009

Holidaymakers have been falling victim to misleading insurance-selling tactics by travel agents, according to a poll in the UK.

Sainsbury's Travel Insurance research reveals that five percent of people who claim to have bought insurance from travel agents over the past 12 months - as many as 407,000 people - were wrongly told that they could not book their holiday unless they also took out the cover being offered by their agents at the time. It added that many people are still falling victim to underhand and misleading sales tactics used by some unscrupulous travel agents to ensure that their policies are purchased.

In this context, Sainsbury's Travel Insurance has welcomed a move related to a new regulation. From January 2009, travel agents will need to be regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) or become Introducers or Representatives of an FSA-regulated company in order to sell travel insurance.

Sam Marrs, Sainsburys Travel Insurance Manager said: "This is an alarming finding, but it will be much more difficult for rogue travel agents to do this once they are regulated by the FSA. Our research shows that up to as many as 8.14 million people could have bought insurance from travel agents over the past 12 months and the new regulation will provide consumers with valuable much needed protection."

The research indicated that travel insurance policies sold through travel agents could potentially leave thousands of people with inadequate cover. Some 16 percent of those who have purchased travel cover from travel agents this year claim they were not asked about any pre-existing medical conditions, slightly down from 17 percent last year. However the problem of travel agents failing to outline what insurance does and does not cover has become worse, affecting 17 percent of customers purchasing cover from travel agents in the past 12 months, up from 13 percent last year, it added.

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