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We ignore 85% of information sent by insurers
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It should take 179 minutes to read average life insurance policy - we spend just 27!
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SunLife’s policies are less than a quarter the length of the average document
On average, insurance products come with more than 25,000 words of explanation written in PhD level language, and SunLife has found that if we were to read every insurance policy we’re sent in full, we’d spend an entire month1 of our lives reading about insurance!
But, we don’t….
In fact, while the average reader should take around two hours to understand the average car insurance policy and between three and three and a half to understand the average life, health, home and travel insurance documents, we are actually spending just 27 minutes!
This means we are skimming through the vast majority of the text and reading just 15% of the content which could mean millions of us may not know much about the cover we’re paying for.
“Over three hours’ worth of reading – often written in complex language – feels like a big commitment to have to make every time you buy an insurance product,’ says SunLife’s Head of Brand Ian Atkinson.
“It’s important to have a good idea of what you are and aren’t covered for, but it’s understandable that typically people don’t want to spend more than half an hour reading about their insurance.
“That’s why we are working hard to make insurance documents shorter and simpler to understand.”
SunLife’s ‘straightfordable’ approach means their life insurance documents are already less than a quarter the length of the average life insurance policy2, and the insurer is looking to cut this down even further.
“One of the big enemies for getting the right cover is complexity,” continues Ian. “We’ve still got a way to go, but at SunLife we want to make buying the right insurance as easy as buying something on Amazon.”
SunLife created a video to demonstrate how financial services should be ‘straightfordable’ - a laser maze was created in Bristol, for willing participants to attempt to successfully get to the other end blindfolded, without breaking the laser or setting off the alarm.
What they didn’t know was that as soon as they put the blindfold on, the lasers were switched off making the challenge very simple! The lase challenge, hosted by SunLife customer Cheryl Baker, can be viewed here: |
