Printed in the British legal journal Clarity, Fall 2000
Susan Milne
Plain language consultant, Clarica
Waterloo Ontario
519 888-2992
Background
Clarica is a 130-year old Canadian financial services company providing life and group insurance and a full range of savings and retirement products. We have 7,500 staff and agents in 90 offices, and nearly 2 million retail insurance customers. We insure one in ten Canadians.
Up until last year, our documents were similar to most large financial institutions – more company-centred than reader-centred. Plus, we were pretty low key and didn’t do much corporate advertising. All this changed in the past year.
In July, 1999 we demutualized and became a stock company. We changed our name from The Mutual Group to Clarica, based on a new brand of “clarity through dialogue.” We also launched a national advertising campaign with the theme “There’s a lot to be said for clarity.” By doing so, we made a public commitment to clear dialogue and plain language.
Our new brand “clarity through dialogue”
We developed a new brand position based on research confirming that customers see financial decisions as overwhelming and confusing. They told us they needed someone who would listen and understand their concerns and financial goals, and help them make sound financial choices. This fit with who we wanted to be. Because of our exclusive sales force distribution system, dialogue is the basis of our business. So we positioned ourselves as a company who listens and understands. At the same time, we assessed our capability to deliver on our brand promise. We found there was a lack of plain language in our administrative writing – contracts, statements, and letters.
As a result, Clarica’s internal directive is that (1) all new documents will be created in plain language, and (2) we will build our staff’s plain language skills. Each department is responsible for prioritizing high-volume, high-visibility documents and rewriting them in plain language. There are no deadlines. We chose to sell the benefits of plain language and build enthusiasm for it, rather than enforce quotas.
New documents created in plain language
The policyholder guide
The first major document Clarica wrote in plain language was the 90-plus page policyholder guide, which we were required to send to all policyholders when we demutualized and became a stock company. We checked the industry to see what other companies had done, and found some examples that convinced us we could do our guide in plain language. Then, to help us with this large project, we contracted with Simplified Communications Group, Toronto, for writing and design expertise.
The drafting process took longer than anticipated because we had to wait for the federal government to write the regulations governing our demutualization process. In the end, it took more than a year to complete our guide. We wanted to help the reader as much as possible through difficult material, so design played an important role. For example, we structured the guide in two parts: overview and details. In addition, pages were formatted and colour-coded by section for easy navigation. We used “you” and “we” in the text and minimized jargon. And we actually received initial feedback that sentence length was a bit short!
Insurance contracts
Since demutualizing, Clarica has developed several plain language insurance products. All have plain language contracts. Drafting is done by a committee of actuaries, lawyers, and business experts. A member of Simplified Communications was on the drafting committee for several of these contracts. Now those committee members have built their plain language skills, we have less need for external consultants.
The following examples are excerpts from our custom term life insurance product.
Sample 1
Original wording
This policy may be converted to a permanent insurance policy on the Life Insured without evidence of insurability. The application for conversion must be submitted with this policy on or at any time before the Final Conversion Date.
Plain language wording
You may convert this policy to a permanent life insurance policy on the life of the insured person without giving us new evidence of insurability.
To do so, you must send us an application on or before the policy anniversary immediately following the insured person’s 65th birthday. This is called the final conversion date and is shown at the beginning of your policy under the heading Policy particulars.
Sample 2
Original wording
This policy terminates on the Expiry Date of the Principal Insurance shown on the Policy Particulars page. Any amount in the Premium Fund will be refunded to you on the Expiry Date.
Plain language wording
If your policy hasn’t ended for any other reason, your policy automatically ends on the policy anniversary immediately following the insured person’s 75th birthday. This date is shown at the beginning of your policy under the heading Policy particulars. There are no longer any benefits payable under this policy after the date your policy ends. On that date, we’ll refund the balance of your withdrawable premium fund.
Other documents created in plain language
We've also written our Code of Business Conduct and several major customer statements in plain language. Here’s a “before and after” look at how we used plain language to clarify one version of an outdated, standard form release agreement.
Before
GENERAL RELEASE
KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS that _____________ (hereinafter referred to as the "Releasor") for and in consideration of the modifications to life insurance policy _______________ set out in Schedule A attached hereto, remises, releases and forever discharges THE MUTUAL LIFE ASSURANCE COMPANY OF CANADA, its directors and officers, its employees and its agents (hereinafter referred to as the "Released Parties") from any and all claims, demands, causes of action, rights, obligations, damages, solicitor fees, costs and liabilities of any nature whatsoever, whether known or not known, suspected or claimed, which the Releasor ever had, now has, or may claim to have against the Released Parties, including, without restricting the generality of the foregoing, any rights or claims related to or arising out of life insurance policy _______________ except a claim or claims for policy benefits provided by that policy and any other policy of life insurance where the Releasor is an insured or beneficiary.
[Note: this release went on for another 1 1/2 pages and included an attached Schedule.]
After
Release Agreement
Clarica Life Insurance Company (“Clarica”) and Mr. Policyholder agree to resolve a dispute involving the sale of life insurance policy #LI -1234,567-8 (“the Policy”) on the following terms:
1. Mr. Policyholder agrees to:
- Release Clarica and its past, present and future directors, employees and agents from any claim relating to the sale of the Policy.
- point, and
- point.
2. Release Clarica and its past, present and future directors, employees and agents from any claim relating to the sale of the Policy.
- point, and
- point.
3. In exchange, Clarica agrees to:
- point, and
- point.
I, Mr. Policyholder, reviewed this release agreement and I understand and agree to its terms.
Date: ___________________
___________________ _____________________
Mr. Policyholder Clarica’s representative
Building skills through training and coaching
We created the role of plain language practice leader, with a mandate to build skills through workshops, coaching and consulting. In addition, we identified about two dozen interested plain language “champions” to act as resources in their work areas. The group meets monthly to share ideas and success stories.
Since last April, nearly 1,800 people have attended a 1-hour awareness session or a 3.5 hour workshop – based on the amount of writing they do. To support the training, we’ve widely distributed plain language reference cards containing plain language tips and replacement words. Our byline is “It’s the responsibility of the writer to be clear, not the responsibility of the audience to interpret.”
Other resources include a plain language Intranet site, and biweekly tips in the Company’s newsletter.
Some industry developments in Canada supporting plain language
In the marketplace, consumer demand for plain language is growing. Here are three recent developments:
- On February 1, 2000, the Canadian Securities Administration required all mutual fund prospectuses to have a standard format and be written in plain language, to make it easier for consumers to compare information among companies.
- The Canadian Bankers’ Association will rewrite mortgage disclosure documents in plain language by the end of 2000, and all other mortgage-related documents by 2005.
- The federal Department of Finance is developing model plain language loan disclosure documents for adoption on a voluntary basis. The loans include credit card contracts and applications, personal lines of credit and automobile loan contracts.
What we’ve learned to date about introducing plain language:
- People have time and budget constraints that work against initiatives like plain language. Our brand helps keep us focused because everything ties to it– how we speak, write and listen to customers, agents and each other.
- Plain language is mainly a head office, not a sales force, initiative. Whatever head office can do to make information clearer, helps agents service their customers better.
- It takes time to develop new habits. We are making progress slowly and in small ways. People say they see the benefit of clarity and are incorporating plain language techniques into their writing. They ask, “Has this been checked for plain language?”
- Build skills internally. Contract with an external plain language consulting firm to get started – with an eye to transferring skills and becoming self-sufficient.
- Choose a visible and important project early to demonstrate the value of plain language, and test with consumers so that you can use consumer feedback to sell the concept of plain language internally.
- A committed legal department is essential. Our lawyers actively support plain language. When lawyers “walk the talk,” or in this case “write the talk,” people notice!
- Success is hard to measure. We have anecdotes from agents and customers, usually through calls to our service centres, but no hard evidence that using plain language has reduced customer inquiries, helped agents sell or saved administrative time and resources. But it’s been less than a year.
- We are publicly leading the plain language parade, but we’ll need to keep working hard. Consumer demand for plain language increasingly will push competitors in the same direction.
List of plain English articles
