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Nine out of ten people can explain Shakespeare’s phrases
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Just one in six can explain financial terms
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Only one in four can explain ‘level term’
To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, Sunlife showed 1010 people a series of Shakespeare phrases and a series of financial terms commonly found in insurance documents.*
The result was that on average nine out of ten (87%) understood the Shakespeare phrases well enough to be able to explain them to someone else.
In comparison, less than two thirds (61%) could explain the meaning of the financial terms to someone else; for five of the fifteen terms – level term, indemnity, Consumer Price Index, Annual equivalent Rate and Non-disclosure - less than half of those questioned could explain them.
That means, people are 43% more likely to understand Shakespeare phrases from 1616 than terms they will come across in financial documents today!
Ian Atkinson, head of brand at SunLife said: “Our research shows that financial services terms are just too complicated. We shouldn’t be in a situation where less than two thirds of people understand terms that are being used frequently in the documents for insurance products they are buying.
“You should never buy a financial product if you don’t understand it, and if you do have questions, you should ask the provider to explain clearly exactly what their documents mean, preferably in writing.
“At SunLife, we want to make our products as simple and straightforward as possible so that our customers know exactly what they are buying.
“Shakespeare had the right idea – when he wanted to get his point across and couldn’t find the right word, he created one! And that is exactly what we have done. We have created the term ‘straightfordable’ which simply and concisely explains what we do here at
SunLife – we want to make financial services straightforward and affordable and, although we know we have work to do, we believe we're moving in the right direction.
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