Why did we create Plain Numbers?

Plain Numbers is a social enterprise; we exist to make a positive difference in people’s lives.

The inspiration for Plain Numbers came during our work over the past decade supporting people who struggle with numbers and helping to raise awareness of the impact of low numeracy skills. Around half the adult population in the UK have the everyday maths skills that we expect of a primary school child. This is a consumer vulnerability that is not widely understood or even recognised; it is a hidden vulnerability. In fact, the number of people affected by poor numeracy is larger than more obvious issues such as: mental health; lack of savings; disabilities; or old age. We passionately believe that more can be done to address this issue – and in early 2021, the research we undertook with leading firms in a wide range of markets proved it. Whilst it would be great to raise everyone’s numeracy skills, the reality right now is that poor numeracy affects millions of people, who as a result, struggle to understand, for example, financial communications from their providers. We are here to change this.

One of the key points we discovered from our research was that people often overestimate their understanding of bills, quotes etc. This makes them even less able to make the best financial choices, as we “don’t know what we don’t know”. We all face a huge number of decisions on a regular basis that can have a dramatic effect on our finances if we get them wrong: utilities; insurance; loans; credit cards; overdrafts; store cards; mortgages; pensions and buy now pay later schemes. Government and regulatory agencies are waking up to the fact that the information given to consumers must be clear, fair and never misleading. We showed that by applying the Plain Numbers Approach to the communication from our Partners, we not only doubled the number of people who understood the information, compared with the old version, but we also reduced the gap between real and perceived understanding. This can only have a positive outcome for consumers and we believe the benefits to the business are potentially massive: improved customer satisfaction; potential for reduced problem debt; reduced need for telephone support and compliance with regulatory best practice.

Now that we have shown it works, our vision is for the Plain Numbers Approach to become the new standard; all communications that involve numbers and data should use Plain Numbers. We will enable this by growing our partnerships with forward-thinking businesses, training their staff to understand and apply the Plain Numbers Approach to their documents and by quality assuring them.

We want you to be involved. If you are as passionate as us about empowering your customers by giving them information in a way that is clear, fair and never misleading, then get in touch.

Click here to contact us.

Click here to view our report.