Australia’s biggest asset management firms are failing to offer consumers clearly written, understandable content, a new report has suggested.
SYDNEY, November 29, 2018 – Poor communication fails customers – and damages trust.
VisibleThread, the content optimization vendor, has released its readability study of the top 39 asset management firms in Australia . The results show how the financial services industry communicates. The average readability score in the study is 35.33. However, an acceptable score from a governance standpoint is 50.
Poor readability impacts on business
“Language clarity affects business efficiency. If visitors cannot understand a website or information documents, what does it say about an organization’s transparency? And what assurance do clients have that internal helpline staff understand them either?” asks Fergal McGovern, CEO of VisibleThread.
Trust in financial services firms continues to decline
Trust has declined in the financial services sector, according to Edelman’s 2018 Trust Barometer . Australia is one of 13 markets where trust has continued to decline between 2017 and 2018. The number one trust builder requested in the Edelman report is easy to understand documents. Financial services firms hold people’s livelihoods and futures. It’s little wonder that people want to have trust in the guardians of their finances.
Sentence length and passive voice
- The average level of passive voice among the firms surveyed is 13%.
- Acceptable level is 4%
- Australia’s asset management companies use long sentences in 28% of copy
- 5x the recommended frequency
Scores for each of the 39 companies surveyed are available here.
Optimizing for readability is simple
The good news for firms is that technology can help simplify content. An AI solution can measure objective readability standards and provide metrics. Marketing and compliance professionals understand better where they need to improve. The ripple effect is happier customers – and much-needed trust.
VisibleThread: VisibleThread helps organizations govern content quality, embed plain language and simplify the user journey for their customers.
About VisibleThread
VisibleThread’s solutions help organizations test & audit their written content for risk and content quality, with dramatically less cost. Customers include; Northrop Grumman, Intel, Accenture and Fannie Mae. Our software instantly finds brand compliance, poor readability and language risk issues within documents and entire websites. Customers produce better quality, more engaging content. Unlike consumer-grade analysis tools, VisibleThread processes hundreds of documents and web pages in minutes. Marketing, Sales and Risk/Contracts Teams in leading global organizations use VisibleThread.
