Ethos report on insurance document readability

Ethos CRS is a company that advocates for clear writing and plain English in complex documents, producing the 2022 readability scorecard: Australian insurance companies. The company was also responsible for rewriting the style manual in plain English for the whole of Australian public service, in partnership with the Digital Transformation Agency.

The readability scorecard rated 26 insurance or insurance-adjacent companies, following up on a similar report in 2021. Documents were given a score out of 100 using a program called VT Writer, which analyses the text and offers a score. Anything written for a reading level of grade 7 or lower achieves better scores.

Scores suffered when readers were required to have a university-level education to get through a document. The average score was 74 out of 100, with some as low as 60.

SGIO, SGIC and NRMA Insurance scored the highest, with scores in the low 80s.

Ethos had a recommendation for insurance companies, which was to adopt the principles of plain language as default and build on the consumer relationship as a result.