ABTA has admitted a late rush and administrative problems have hampered efforts to get agents through its insurance exams ahead of today’s deadline, but says it is happy with the numbers registered so far.
Out of the 50,000 agents ABTA originally estimated would need the qualification, 26,000 have already or are in the process of attaining level one and 4,300 are going through level two.
In addition TUI, which is running its own scheme, says 7,500 staff will have attained level one by the end of the year and Thomas Cook has 7,890 agents on its own scheme.
The exams are central to the exemption negotiated by the association from costly new regulations brought in by the Financial Services Authority in January this year.
An ABTA spokeswoman said: “There have been administration problems because everyone has come at the last minute.”
Institute of Travel and Tourism chairman Steven Freudmann, who launched a separate training programme to ABTA’s scheme, said overall the industry had now shown the commitment needed to satisfy ABTA’s code of conduct committee.
“We’ve been very busy dealing with both ABTA members and non-ABTA members such as colleges and coach operators,” Freudmann said.
Newman Street added it was currently preparing letters to send out to members who had not yet registered for level one, warning they must comply by a given date or face fines or being excluded from ABTA membership.
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