Atol reform round-table: Industry experts join the CAA in a Travel Weekly d Continued from page 48


transformation into a digital platform company . . . to deliver our offerings to 21 million customers in real-time, individualised anywhere in the world.” In March 2020, Joussen


noted: “Tui’s survival was in doubt.” Now, he wrote: “We have successfully overcome the crisis. Our liquidity is high. “We anticipate a strong


summer with customer numbers almost on a par with 2019. We are starting a new chapter.” He noted that when his


option to resign was extended to June 2022 due to the pandemic, “the deadline seemed long to everyone, yet the time to decide has come”. Tui supervisory board


chairman Dieter Zetsche expressed regret at Joussen leaving, saying: “He took over a group threatened with being split up, successfully restructured it and gave Tui its current future-proof shape. This is very much his success story.” Joussen was helped in


this by the fragility of major competitors. The failures of Monarch in the UK and Air Berlin in Germany in 2017 removed competing leisure carriers. The collapse of Thomas Cook in 2019 took out Tui’s biggest rival across Europe. But he ensured Tui stayed ahead of rivals. He will be replaced from


October by Tui chief financial officer (CFO) Sebastian Ebel, whose appointment Joussen said “stands for reliability and continuity”. Group director for corporate finance and investor relations Mathias Kiep will


become CFO. i Get Social, page 27


‘Using technology to pool data could cut cost of cover’


Centralising data to provide greater transparency on where risk lies could reduce layers of protection and the costs of financial protection. That is according to Will


Plummer, chief executive of Trust My Group, who said using


technology to make data available centrally could restore confidence among financial institutions and insurers which consider travel “super high-risk” post-Covid. He said: “If everyone is covering


the risk, you’re paying the cost three or four times. “We need to work collectively to


get better with data, then you can accurately know what the risk looks like, not [just put] a finger in the air in terms of calculating risk.” Plummer suggested a


multifaceted approach to Atol financial protection involving bonds, trust accounts and insurance could work if merchant acquirers and insurers were able to assess their risk accurately via access to data. Suggesting the need for a single


set of data, he said: “It would “allow you to say ‘Here is the booking and here is the exposure on that supplier, on that principal and on that acquirer’. Atol would have full visibility over the data and connect it to Atol receipts.”


Plummer: Reliance on card protection deters acquirers


The CAA has been warned there won’t be progress towards a risk-based Atol scheme if merchant acquirers are forced to continue ‘shadow bonding’ to cover refunds to customers who made credit card bookings when an Atol holder fails. Merchant acquirers process card


payments and the CAA typically directs consumers with credit card bookings to the acquirers when there is a failure because the payments are protected under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. That leads acquirers to seek


bonds or withhold payments to cover the value of bookings. The CAA is preparing a consulta-


tion this autumn on reforms that are likely to include replacing the current £2.50 Atol Protection Contribution (APC) with a variable rate based on an assessment of the risk of a business or the value of its bookings. An initial CAA consultation on


Atol reform last year found little industry consensus on the way forward other than agreement on the need for change and majority acceptance of a move to a risk-based APC. Will Plummer, chief executive


46 30 JUNE 2022 Will Plummer


of financial services firm Trust My Group, said the financial sector’s confidence in travel must be restored. Speaking at the ITT Conference in


Istanbul this month, Plummer asked: “Why are there standard Atols with no collateral and shadow bonding that falls back on the acquirer?” He said: “I have sympathy with


the CAA. Travel is not simple. It’s multifaceted with multiple players. But the bottom line is there is not just Atol risk. It grieves me that when we’re trying to get merchant acquirers back into the market, we’re charging the £2.50 [APC] and then falling back on Section 75.”


Plummer added: “We’re coming


from a setup that has been around for a long time, but Covid and the Thomas Cook and Monarch failures have revealed how fragile it is.” However, CAA group director of


consumers and markets Paul Smith said: “It’s not just the risk of failure, it’s the impact of failure. Over time, I wouldn’t say the risk of failure is particularly different in different parts of the market. We’ve seen failures at the smaller end, medium end and at the bigger end. We’re trying to find an approach based on outcome and not unduly prescribe the means by which each company must do business.”


travelweekly.co.uk


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