How could (and should) consumer documentation be simplified – Adviser views

“I think when it comes to documentation, we need to look at separating out the types of documentation. There are the contractual documents, things like terms and conditions and then there is the documents that are there to help consumers understand and explain what these policies practically do. The terms and conditions do quite often have to include quite a lot of technical language…  one example of that is critical illness wordings. The actual critical illness definitions themselves have to include medical terminology, because from an insurers point of view, they have to clearly set out what is and isn’t included. Quite often when we’re talking about conditions that are covered, a lot of those will be conditions that people won’t be as familiar with. So the terminology will include complex medical language. Although there is definately more work to make the definitions clearer and less complex, I don’t think there’s any kind of getting away from the fact that unless you are familiar with the condition, diagnostic techniques and treatments these definitions are unlikely to make sense to most people on the street.”

“Documentation that’s provided to help consumers understand what they have access to should be written in non-complex and in language that pretty much anyone that can read should be able to understand. These documents are not legaly binding documents so do not have to have all the detail, but should provide the crx of what a consumer needs to understand in simple terms.”

What we are trying to do with our ‘Designed by Doctors’ is work with the industry to improve critical illness definitions so that they are are less complex, not contradictory and ultimately using up to date medical terminology. Our curent concerns are that doctors are reading CI definitions and unable to fully understand exactly what is covered. If a doctor can’t succinctly understand exactly what is and isn’t covered by reading one of the definitions, then there is something wrong. For that reason, we’ve worked with our doctors to say, ‘okay, how can it be improved? How would you write that definition so that it’s not covering anything more than what an insurer is trying to cover using up to date medical terminology and concise language?’”

“What we’re trying to do is help give a doctor’s perspective of exactly what a good definition looks like in terms of its language, its terminology, and how that’s presented in a way that a doctor, if they picked up that definition, would instantly be able to know what is and isn’t covered.  Alongside that, our doctors have given some examples of plain English explanations that could be used alongside the definition to help explain to consumers what the condition is and what is covered.”

“I think we’ve got to try and accommodate people’s learning styles because it is a bit of a learning journey, and just to totally appreciate what the different people’s needs are. I’m not one of these people who can do videos and stick them on LinkedIn and things like that, but people are getting messages across by having these little short, short, sharp, succinct explanations of what they do.”

“Imagine all the different single individual products you could get further down the line, because when you talk about price and value and you only pay for what you actually need, that’s going to create more products than ever before. And it’s all for the right reasons. We’re going to make an already comprehensive world far more comprehensive, and that’s going to be to the detriment of everybody, especially if you’re a new adviser coming in. I mean, even the best of us who know the product ranges that exist today probably struggle at points, let alone somebody new.”

“Are we going to get into a world that’s going to have 500 different products, and how is anybody going to be able to cope with that? And so that was the point around consumer duty because I don’t know.” 

“If you just provide a summary by video of what somebody’s getting, a real human being talking to a real human being, that’s going to last an imprint on people’s minds for a lot longer and a lot more, and have far greater impact than a three-page, seven-page, fifeteen-page summary…”

“Innovation is creating confusion, which I think is what we’ve all just been saying there. The sourcing of a product now is causing us so much of a problem as an advisor that but that’s not the client’s problem, is it? That’s for us to work out. And like you said, the insurers to work out. I personally would like any new innovation to stop until everyone’s worked out how to sort the documents out, to make it easy for the client to understand and make it easy for us to choose what we’re going to have.” 

“I’ve got the whole team here talking this morning about layers and layers of cover that’s making it really hard to choose the right thing for the client, but that’s for us to sort out. And I think it’s really important that we’re all here talking about it in simplified terms. We’re using the friendly language for our customers. There’s loads of us creating videos that are making it easy and simple for the customers to understand the cover.”

“I completely agree with Angela. They should have video options as well that we can pick. We’re doing so much work with our vulnerable clients and making sure that they we are interacting in different ways.”

“Now, you know like you said, videos, Whatsapp, Facebook, LinkedIn… We’re multi-media in terms of how we advise. And I’m finding that the industry isn’t multi-media or isn’t catching up with what the rest of us are doing. And whether, like Ian said, it’s a lack of funding to do all that, but don’t innovate if you can’t make the other part of it work for the clients, in my opinion.”

“How do you actually cope with those extremities within the documents you’re trying to produce, and make that kind of ‘one size fits all?’ There are instances where you could change the documents and make them bespoke to individual customers... That I think, is where we’d need to get to as an interim measure. And then I agree, it is a really interesting view of how you would start to really bespoke documents to individual customer needs.”

“It’s all about putting the customer needs first, delivering good outcomes and, you know, consumer understanding. And I think we kind of can’t get away from doing what we need to do to help the customer in this way, and obviously providers as well. And what I find is I’d advise the customer, they’ll be very, very clear of what those products are and what they’ve chosen, what the products do. And then a lot of the times the documents that we need to send them kind of confuse them. And obviously from a compliance point of view, we have to send them the various documentation and they need that. What I tend to find is that I find it easier to send them in kind of two tranches, like, you know, this is the document that is really easy to understand, and this is what you’ve got.”

“You’ve got all these questions that you get from clients. And it does make things quite difficult and difficult for them to understand. I think the terms should be always on the policy schedules and always on the statements that they get from the providers, because that’s really, really important for the client to continually be aware what they are or not covered for, and also whether it’s a reviewable exclusion.” 

“And all of the providers now should have a client portal. Yes, some people may, you know, wish to have paper copies. But there should be a client portal. You should be able to go on there, see exactly what you’ve got and download your documents.”

“My first point is around language and reviewing the usage of language. I think a really good exercise for adviser firms to do is to get someone outside the industry, like a friend or family member, to have a look at your documents, your website, and everything that forms part of that customer journey. Because as much as advisers probably think they’re simplifying it through no fault of their own, when you’re involved in the business day to day advising, it’s easy to get caught up in all of that. So I think it’s good to have that outsider perspective. I think that would be really invaluable for a lot of firms to go through that exercise.”

“I’d also noted down what someone had already said around the layering of information as well. If, for example, you’re using a PDF document, can you embed links into that so that the customer clicks on something, it directs them to where they need to go? So you’re not having to scroll through, because it is a balance between making them more dynamic.”