An insurer’s recent research found that private tenants are highly at risk financially as they have little or no knowledge at all of their liabilities.

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Announcing its findings the insurer brands tenants as “clueless” with their lack of basic knowledge regarding their obligations.

However the research was only carried out with 455 PRS tenants, but it did find that nearly half (46 per cent) have not taken out a contents insurance policy.

Of that group, 90 per cent admit to not knowing what tenants’ liability insurance is and three out of five saying they were not even aware it existed, which seems somewhat unlikely.

The government’s latest English Private Landlord Survey data shows that 60 per cent of landlords and 54 per cent of agents. Those that did not return the full deposit, 65 per cent of landlords and 60 per cent of letting agents said this was because of damage to contents and properties.

A spokesperson for the insurer, said: “Leasing a property involves paying an often-hefty security deposit which is not guaranteed to be returned – at least in full – if the landlord’s belongings are damaged at the end of the tenancy.

 “We also know that demand for furnished properties, already making up nearly a third of all rented properties, continues to grow and the potential costs of damaging the landlord’s belonging for these renters could be significant.

“Our latest research demonstrates that many leaseholders continue to be unaware of the merits of tenants liability insurance and therefore highly exposed to financial loss.