Royal London has launched a new glossary to help consumers understand financial services jargon and is calling on consumers to help it find words and acronyms which need translation.
The Finglish Glossary will be expanded as it gains more submissions from consumers and submissions can be made via the glossary.
As part of the campaign Royal London has invited its members to help remove jargon from its own literature, and is encouraging staff to avoid jargon wherever possible.
Clare Salmon, group brand director at Royal London, said: "The financial services industry shrouds itself in a dense fog of jargon - we call it 'Finglish'. At Royal London we're on a mission to demystify unnecessarily complex financial words, and we're seeking to enlist consumers' help. We believe helping people understand financial language is key to helping them make the right financial decisions."
As Royal London continues to bring all its existing brands under a single Royal London umbrella, it is hoped that its customer-facing documents will be cleansed of Finglish.
The campaign has also taken to twitter to find jargon in need of translation with the hashtag #Finglish.
Salmon added: "Our 'Finglish' Glossary is designed to help people make sense of financial English. The financial services industry isn't necessarily the first place you'd expect to find plain English - there is lots of complicated jargon and mystifying terminology. So we decided to try to make sense of some our industry's strangest or most confusing words."
Steve Jenner, broadcaster and media spokesperson for the Plain English Campaign said: "We applaud Royal London for this initiative. Plain English Campaign has been urging the financial services industry to ditch the jargon for years. Whereas it is encouraging to see one company taking steps to do this, a whole - industry approach is needed and that must involve the regulator.
"When will this industry understand it will benefit financially when it abandons gobbledygook? 'Prospects' are much more likely to become customers if they can understand what it is they are being sold. Until the whole industry understands how important this is, we'll continue to fight the use of obscure and often misleading language."
Jenner added: "Until then, all we can do is encourage businesses like The Royal London for having the strength of their convictions in order to make products easier for people to understand. I am sure this will help them to increase sales, as well.
"The Plain English Campaign will be happy to offer services to any business wishing to respond to this challenge. This includes the Crystal Mark accreditation scheme, which is becoming increasingly popular across business, government and public service."
