In This Issue. Volume 1, Number 1 March 2014

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1 Having trouble viewing this ? C lick here Volume 1, Number 1 March 2014 In This Issue Introducing "The Clear Communicator" "If you can use a ten-dollar word instead of a milliondollar word, use it." A Message From Clear Communication Champion Les Herr RBC Insurance - Clarifying our communication, one letter at a time Use the Readability Statistics in Microsoft Word to Help Make Your Documents Clearer A Clearer Rescission Right Provision Introducing "The Clear Communicator" Welcome to the first issue of The Clear Communicator, the CLHIA's on- line newsletter of clear communication information and resources. Helping You Communicate Clearly This newsletter is from CLHIA members for CLHIA members. It will feature clear communication successes, tips and resources for the life and health insurance industry. We expect it will be of particular interest to those involved in public relations, communications, marketing, legal, product development, compliance, operations and distribution. Industry Support for Clear Communication & Financial Literacy The Clear Communicator is a project of the CLHIA's Working Group on Simplified Disclosure. We recognize clear communication as one way our industry can contribute to consumers' financial understanding and the national efforts underway in the area of financial literacy. Clear communication goes beyond plain language. It includes providing content that focuses on your audience, is easy to understand, and uses design elements to enhance your audience's understanding of the content. In short, communicating clearly will assist consumers in better understanding how life and health insurance can help with their financial needs. Access The Clear Communicator Anytime You can access The Clear Communicator in two easy ways. 1. On the CLHIA website. Articles are added to the site as they are written and are categorized for easy access. You can access our site at any time for our complete collection of clear communication materials.

2 2. Via . Three times a year, we create and distribute by a full issue of the newsletter featuring all of the new articles we have posted. To receive future issues of The Clear Communicator by , click the button below. Contribute to Our Success In the coming months and years, our challenge is to keep the interest in clear communication alive through relevant, industry specific content. Click the button below to send us your ideas for articles on clear communication. Contributor: Erica Hiemstra, CLHIA "If you can use a ten-dollar word instead of a million-dollar word, use it." A Message From Clear Communication Champion Les Herr Below are some thoughts from Les Herr, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Empire Life Insurance Company, on the importance on clear communication in his company and our industry. Why is clear communication a priority for you? At Empire Life, our vision is to be a company that is known for simplicity and for being easy to do business with. Achieving clear communication is very high on our radar, but we know we still have a way to go to really get there. It comes back to making insurance and our solutions clear to our customer and our distribution partners. We want people to understand how their coverage

3 works. Life insurance is really quite simple: people pay us a premium and we write a cheque to the family when the insured person dies. No matter the concept or situation, the product is essentially the same. We should be using simpler, clearer terms to explain the coverage and benefits life insurance provides. How are you fostering a culture of clear communication within your organization? We are looking at all aspects of our business to see how we can eliminate jargon and make things clear and easily understood. I like to say, "If you can use a ten- dollar word instead of a million- dollar word, use it." For example, avoid talking about "paradigms" and "leveraging strategic value- added objectives". Instead, use language everyone understands. We also recognize that clear communication is a work in progress. We encourage people to ask questions if they do not understand something. It is important to realize that if you do not understand it, other people probably do not understand it either. Two specific initiatives that we are particularly proud of at Empire Life are: Our plain language toolkit. This is a part of our brand and communication strategy. It is a toolkit for employees that shares the principles of plain language. It also has plain language exercises teams can use to develop these skills. Our new electronic buying process for life insurance, called "Fast & Full". Fast, because policies can be issued either at the time of purchase or within a few days. Full, because it offers full underwriting. We took a different approach in developing this process in that we looked outside the industry for best practices in online transactions. The team also worked hard to take out technical jargon. How does clear communication contribute to your organization? Many companies in the financial services industry are trying to make things simpler for customers, banks in particular. It is not a competitive advantage to have clear communication, it is something that is necessary to compete in our industry. No company wants their products to be considered confusing or complicated. On the other hand, I cannot think, right now, of a particular company that stands out for doing an exceptional job at communicating clearly to customers and advisors. This means there are great opportunities for Empire Life to be a leader in this area.

4 What's your top communication "pet peeve"? It bugs me when I read a letter to a customer that looks like wording from one of our contracts. If I read something that I cannot understand, how can we expect our customers to understand it? If we communicate clearly from the beginning, we can avoid some of the 'ping- pong' that happens when customers write to us about an issue, we write back and then they write to us again to complain. Most complaints stem from a misunderstanding. So we have to be clear, not just during the sales process, but at all steps along the way. Another pet peeve I have is "acronym speak". Too many acronyms are used in our industry. In your view, how does clear communication support the principle of treating customers fairly? When you are transparent and clear in communications, customers have a more solid understanding of what they are buying and what they are entitled to. I think to help people have that understanding is the standard of fairness. People then feel that they are coming from a position of knowledge and understanding to make better financial decisions. Clear communication helps build trust which is an important part of the fair treatment of customers. Do you engage your distributors in clear communication initiatives? I meet with advisors and managing general agents regularly throughout the year and usually our conversations centre around how to make business simpler and easier for our customers. I acknowledge that we have as much work to do in communicating clearly with our distribution partners as we do with our customers. Why is clear communication important in our industry? The success of our industry depends on Canadians making responsible financial decisions. To do so, they need to have the knowledge, skills and confidence to make those decisions. When communication is clear, customers can read and understand what they are buying. Clear communication also helps build trust and confidence. When customers have that trust and confidence, they want to engage more in investing and taking care of their financial security. There are many reasons why people do not buy insurance, but I think a big reason is that people think it is too complicated, and that is unfortunate. Do you have any other thoughts to share on clear

5 communication? Clear communication does not affect just one area of our business or fall under the jurisdiction of one department. It is important for all areas of our business to apply clear communication practices across our organization. That can be a challenge when you have people with different communication skills, knowledge and needs. It is not a "switch" you can turn on, it is a series of small victories. I also think that once one company starts to make a difference in this area, other companies will follow. Contributor: Les Herr, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Empire Life Insurance Company RBC Insurance - Clarifying our communication, one letter at a time There is nothing more frustrating for a customer than trying to wade through legal or technical jargon to decipher what a letter or application form really says. That's why, at RBC Insurance, we're listening to our clients who have said they want us to communicate in a way that is simple and easy for them to understand. One of our strategic objectives is to simplify the way we do business and we have a Client Experience Council in place to oversee initiatives designed to do just that. In late 2012, the Council launched a "Letters Enhancement Initiative" to review all of our written client communication, starting with letters. The effort to clarify all client- facing communication is a major undertaking for any organization. It is especially challenging for an insurance company with different lines of business, multiple administration systems and hundreds of operational processes, not to mention legal and regulatory requirements. An initiative like this requires strong leadership and a sound approach. Leadership The head of our Client Experience Council is Laura Gainey, Senior Vice President of Service and Operations. Laura is committed to using plain language, as she is often at the receiving end of escalations related to the lack of clarity in our letters. Our President and CEO, Neil Skelding, is also a strong advocate for improving our communications. He spoke at the CLHIA Clear Communication Seminar in the fall 2013 and explained how the client experience is influenced by every interaction with a customer, including what we say, whether it is in writing or in person.

6 Approach When we began reviewing our letters, we discovered that client communication was prepared in different ways across various teams and business units, which meant there was little consistency in our tone and approach. We knew it would be overwhelming to tackle all of the letters at once. The majority of our letters come from the Client Acquisition & Service and Claims areas. We decided to focus our efforts on rewriting the highest frequency and highest volume letters from these areas, and turning the letters into customizable templates. Our writing lead worked with the business areas and subject matter experts to rewrite each letter using plain language. We also ensured the tone of each letter was consistent with the RBC brand. Expanding the Scope It hasn't taken long for the word to spread about the initiative. As we worked on the first letters, requests came from other units asking for our help to write new letters and to clarify applications and forms. We don't say no these requests. Our resources are limited though, so we are careful to take on new work slowly, as capacity allows. Measures of success We intend to measure the success of this initiative in several ways. One way is through our customer satisfaction and loyalty surveys, which have specific questions about our written communication. If we see increased scores on specific survey questions, we believe we can attribute those improvements in large part to our improved letters. Other measures will include qualitative research, such as the comments on the surveys, and a reduction in escalated complaints caused by confusing language in our communications. For those looking to take on similar projects, our advice is to take it slow, have an executive sponsor and engage the right experts. Contributor: Tanya Sinha, Senior Manager, Client Experience Delivery, RBC Insurance Use the Readability Statistics in Microsoft Word to Help Make Your Documents Clearer Readability scores can help you evaluate whether your document is written clearly for its audience. Microsoft Word has a built- in readability statistics

7 feature in its Spelling & Grammar tool. Here's how to use this feature in Word (version 10). First, turn on the readability statistics feature: 1. Open Word 2. Click on the "File" tab 3. Click on "Options" 4. Click on "Proofing" 5. Under the heading "When correcting spelling and grammar in Word" select "Show readability statistics" Next, check your document: 1. Open your document 2. Click on the Review menu. Then, select "Spelling & Grammar" from the ribbon. 3. Work your way through the "Spelling & Grammar" check. At the end of the check you'll be presented with a readability statistics summary of your document. It looks like this:

8 Last, review your readability summary. Below are a few points to assist you in interpreting the summary. Sentences per paragraph - A plain language score is 3-5 sentences per paragraph. Words per sentence - Use short sentences. An average of 25 words per sentence indicates a plain language score. Passive sentences - Use active voice. The lower your score, the clearer your language is. (The US Federal Plain Language Guidelines explain active and passive voice, see page 20) Flesch Reading ease - This scale measures reading from 100 (for easy to read) to 0 (for very difficult to read). A score of 65 is a plain language score. Flesch- Kincaid grade level - This converts your Flesch Reading ease score to an estimated reading grade level. Grade 5 to 8 indicates a plain language score. Contributor: Erica Hiemstra, CLHIA A Clearer Rescission Right Provision The following example was presented by Doug Lincoln of Simplified Communications Group at the CLHIA's Clear Communication Seminar (September 19, 2013). Before: A rescission right provision from an annuity contract

9 Rights of rescission You may rescind the purchase of the Contract and any allocation of a Deposit to a Fund by sending written notice requiring the rescission to us within two business days from the date you received confirmation of the purchase of the Contract. For any allocation of a Deposit to a Fund other than the initial contractual purchase, the right to rescind will only apply in respect to the additional allocated Deposit and written notice requesting the rescission must be provided to us within two business days from the date you received confirmation. You will be refunded the lesser of (a) the amount invested in the Fund, and (b) the value of the investment in the Fund on the Valuation Date following the day that we received the request for rescission, plus any fees or charges associated with the transaction. After: Plain language re-write of the same provision You may cancel your purchase You may cancel this annuity contract and any deposit you made. To do so, you must send us your request in writing. You must send it within two business days from the date you received confirmation of your purchase. You may also cancel any new deposit you make to an existing contract. Again, you must ask us in writing within two business days from the date you received the confirmation. We'll refund any deposit you made. Your refund will be the lower of the following: the amount you deposited, or the value of your investment in the fund on the valuation day following the day we receive your request. We'll also refund any fees or charges related to your deposit. Readability Comparison: Old New Number of words: Words per sentence: Passive sentences: 75% 0% Flesch reading ease: Flesch grade level:

10 Contributor: Doug Lincoln, Senior Strategist, Simplified Communications Group Inc. Staff Contact Erica Hiemstra, Director, Distribution and C onsumer Affairs ehiemstra@clhia.ca C ontact Erica with your questions, suggestions for future articles and to subscribe. This was sent to mkramer@clhia.ca by ccsubscription@clhia.ca Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe Privacy Policy. Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association Inc. 1 Queen St. E., Ste 1700 Toronto ON M5C 2X9 Canada