Arrears letters are vital to both businesses and the customers who receive them. The effectiveness of these letters hinges on clarity and understanding, as well as communicating with empathy.  

2024 has been a successful year for advancing customer understanding, thanks to the efforts of our dedicated partners. Here’s a look back at some of the highlights that made this year so impactful.

ClearScore and Thinks Insight & Strategy unveil new research on the impact of the Plain Numbers Approach in improving consumer understanding of short-term borrowing on price comparison interfaces.

Key findings include:

Double the number of people accurately understood loan choices when a Plain Numbers Approach to showing the cost of credit is used within the current regulatory framework (i.e. alongside APR)

Nearly triple the number of people accurately understood loan choices when APR and a representative example were removed completely (an increase from 13% to 35%)

Following the success of our Community Events in 2024, we are excited to announce the dates and topics for our 2025 sessions! Below, you’ll find details about each session and how to register. Keep an eye out because this is just the first five sessions, and we will be announcing more exciting events throughout 2025!

Making sure customers understand your communications isn’t always as simple as it seems.  

When testing understanding of everyday communications such as utility bills, credit card offers and insurance payment options we found that roughly a third or less of people can demonstrate good understanding of the key information.  

After the Plain Numbers Approach was applied, the number of people who understood doubled.  

Many organisations are now focussing on better understanding, not least those regulated by the FCA who are bound by the Customer Understanding Outcome of The Consumer Duty.  

The Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) recent call for input on simplifying guidance is a welcome step towards simplifying regulation. This has the potential to make financial communications clearer for customers.  

At Plain Numbers, we specialise in helping firms improve customer understanding through clear, understandable communication.  

We know firsthand the challenges firms face in cutting through mandated wording and overprescribed rules to make important information as easy to understand as possible.  

We have welcomed and championed Consumer Duty, but we believe changes to existing and prescriptive regulation could make it even more impactful. 

We were joined by Plain Numbers Practitioners Caroline, the Customer Communications Manager at Thames Water; Dave, a UX Designer; and Michael, a Communications Specialist from StepChange. 

Thames Water 

Thames is the largest water provider in the UK with 16 million customers. They send a large volume of customer communications including service letters, emails, booklets, account information and bills.  

Thames were one of the first Plain Numbers Partners, and we recently celebrated their renewal.   

Our response to Ofgem’s Consumer Vulnerability Strategy Refresh highlighted our work to address a major, yet often overlooked, consumer vulnerability: poor numeracy.  

As part of our mission to make customer communications more understandable, we welcome the opportunity to highlight how low numeracy impacts vulnerable consumers and propose changes that can lead to better outcomes for everyone. 

Registry Trust have become the latest organisation to commit to improving the way they communicate numbers by joining forces with Plain Numbers.

Our new three-year partnership will help ensure key communications are more accessible and numbers are presented as clearly and simply as possible.

Ben Perkins, our Director of Partnerships and Services, has years of experience working with people with low confidence in numeracy and maths anxiety.

In this blog he sheds light on what maths anxiety means and how it can impact consumers.

In the UK we’re very used to seeing complex and jargon heavy legal documents attached to financial products, but what happens if we simplify how the numbers and numerical concepts are written? We invited Tim Johnson, partner at UK & Ireland law firm Browne Jacobson, to explain how Plain Numbers has become central to his approach.

Join us for an engaging session with Thames Water, the UK’s largest water company with 16 million customers, and StepChange, the UK’s leading debt charity, exploring how the Plain Numbers Approach is being applied in real-world communications.

Cadent, the UK’s largest gas distribution network, has teamed up with Plain Numbers, a leader in simplifying communications, to help improve how it communicates with customers who struggle with numbers. Nearly half of working-aged adults in the UK have numeracy skills equivalent to those of an eleven-year-old or below, which can create challenges when dealing with essential services like energy.

In response to low customer satisfaction in the energy sector, Ofgem has announced it will launch an ambitious ‘Consumer confidence: a step up in standards’ programme, aiming to restore trust by raising customer service to the highest industry standard.  

Organisations and professionals are striving to ensure that their messages are not only received but understood by their audience. Popular tools that assess readability, such as Flesch-Kincaid scoring, have emerged to assist these efforts.  These are based on simple algorithms and are very easy to use and implement. It's a metric many turn to with the belief that a good score ensures their content is easy to understand. However, this belief is not as straightforward as it might seem.

Green energy company ScottishPower has become the first British energy supplier to join forces with Plain Numbers as part of its ongoing commitment to ensuring its customer communications are clear, simple and easy to understand.

We recently hosted the launch of our ‘Plain Numbers in Practice’ report, highlighting the diverse applications of the Plain Numbers Approach across a wide range of communications. The report features case studies from six different organisations and a range of thematic stories.

Plain Numbers announced a strategic collaboration with Visa, focused on enabling inclusive financial services for adults in the UK. With Visa’s vast network and the Plain Numbers Approach, the collaboration will strive to bring enhanced financial inclusion and design in government disbursements, fostering access to the global economy.

Using research to inform how you write your communications is an important opportunity to assess the communications effectiveness. This is particularly helpful in understanding whether changes you’ve made have indeed improved customer understanding.

Anglian Water has become a Plain Numbers Partners, marking a significant milestone as one of the first utility companies to do so. The partnership underscores Anglian Water’s dedication to enhancing their customer communications through the implementation of the Plain Numbers Approach.