Insurance Times Awards 2023: Atlanta Group sees 49% boost in customer understanding

What made you bid for the Customer Champion of the Year – Broker award?

As a financial services organisation, there is compulsory information that we have to communicate and it is imperative that we do everything we can to help simplify our insurance communications – so customers can make informed decisions.

This is especially important at a time when around half the working age population have numeracy levels below the expectations of primary school leavers.

Our Better Communications project targeted numeracy and financial literacy areas as well as tone, language and layout.

Working with our customers and our parent Plain Numbers – a social enterprise organisation – we researched, redesigned and tested our communications to ensure customer understanding.

The results showed a 49% increase in customer understanding of who their insurer is and a 36% increase in customers understanding of price, to name but a handful of the positive results achieved.

We wanted to embed this customer centric approach to communications further with our colleagues and have people from various departments fully trained practitioners of Plain Numbers ensuring we are continuing the great work on improving customer understanding.

What do you think makes your entry stand out and why should you win the award?

Swinton customers – with Autonet and Carole Nash customers to follow – now benefit from more simply explained, jargon-free and easy to read new business, mid-term adjustment and renewal communications that are officially accredited by Plain Numbers.

This makes Atlanta the first organisation in the UK to have core high-volume customer communications certified by Plain Numbers.

In a highly-regulated industry with detailed compliance and legal responsibilities, making changes to long-established wording and traditional phrasing has been challenging. It has also been essential in improving how customers understand important concepts – from who their insurer is from how much they pay for their insurance.

From the work with Plain Numbers, we know people struggle with literacy and numeracy for a number of reasons. But by thinking ‘customer first’, we’re continuously improving and evolving our services.

Helping people make more informed financial decisions helps everyone and builds trust in the insurance industry.

What would winning this award mean to you and your firm?

Atlanta strive to put the customer at the heart of everything we do. So for this to be also recognised by Insurance Times would be a great honour

Using the Plain Numbers approach has helped us to further enhance our communications and it is brilliant to see how simple changes can make a real difference to increase customer understanding.

There is always more we can do. But winning the Insurance Times Customer Champion of the Year – Broker category would be the icing on the cake not just for Atlanta but also our customers too.

This is what we do – help improve the lives of our customers by providing financial services in a way to help them make informed decisions.

By putting our customers at the heart of what we do, we will always continue to build and evolve and I am honored to part of a great team and orgainsation such as the Atlanta Group.