by Sam Dunn

Last updated at 10:34 AM on 18th January 2012

Banks and insurers are targeting customers with offers for practically useless low-cost insurance.

Consumers are being sold insurance for anything from kitchen appliances to electronic gadgets and policies to protect your identity in the event of ID fraud. but in most cases the cover can prove useless.

So rife is the sales push that complaints about insurance to the independent Financial Ombudsman Service have leapt by a third. The City watchdog Financial Services Authority (FSA) is understood to be monitoring the situation closely.

Breakdown: Consumers are being sold insurance for anything from kitchen appliances to electronic gadgets but in most cases the cover can prove useless

Many of these policies are a waste of money, as in many cases they’ll simply be duplicating existing cover youmay have elsewhere. for example, many electronic gadgets may already becovered on your home contents insurance. Other criticisms are that theyfeature exclusions and small print which make it hard to claim, and aresubject to  rip-off premium price hikes.

David Black, banking specialist at analyst Defaqto, says: ‘There is a huge appetite in banks for selling these kinds of products to existing customers — although banks like to call it “deepening the relationship”. in reality, this is a way for banks to try to claw back their profits.’

Parts of the industry behind these products are already under scrutiny.

Card insurance company CPP has been investigated by the FSA following concerns over the way it sold identitytheft policies. and HomeServe, which suspended its call centre staff from selling emergency cover after allegations of mis-selling policies in November, has yet to report on an internal investigation or reveal details about any compensation to some 48,000 customer complaints it is reviewing.

Here’s Money Mail’s guide to the insurance to beware of:

The cover costs from