Spare us the small print
Support our campaign to do away with lengthy terms and conditions and legal jargon that no one understands.
What’s the problem?
Terms and conditions are a miserable part of modern life. Whether you’re signing up for a music streaming service, renting a car or taking out a mortgage – you can be sure that there will be thousands of words of small print to read and agree to before you can get what you’re after.
Financial products are the worst of them all. Not only are they too long - with the very worst running to almost 70,000 words (that’s twice the length of George Orwell’s Animal Farm!) - they’re also packed with jargon that makes them impossible to understand.
The result is that most people don’t read the Ts & Cs in full – and in the world of money, that can be a costly decision.
What needs to happen?
Banks and insurers need to be forced to put their documents in a language and design that helps people understand them. They also need to work harder to make them no longer than they need to be. If LV can create a 7,000 word car insurance policy, why does Endsleigh need over 30,000 words.
We don’t believe companies will step up to the challenge of creating simple documents without some encouragement. So we want to see the Financial Conduct Authority making this a priority - setting a high standard and handing out fines to lazy companies that rely on complicated small print.
The FCA rules say that all customer documents should be “clear, fair and not misleading”. For now, most companies don’t get close to passing that test.
How you can help
1
Follow us on Twitter, and retweet our tweets. Like us on Facebook. Give us your email address.
The more supporters we have, the louder our voice will be. We’re already quoted regularly in the national press, and appear on TV, but we’ll be able to make more of a difference if we have thousands of supporters behind us.
You'll find us on Twitter @fairerfinance, and here's a link to our Facebook page.
If you give us your email address, we’ll keep you up to date on the progress of this campaign and others – and might be in touch from time to time to ask you to take some action, such as contacting decision makers, or writing to your bank.
2
Use our tables to choose your bank and insurer
Our tables rank banks and insurers based on what their customers think of them, how good they are at handling complaints, and how transparent they are. As part of our transparency scoring, we analyse companies’ terms & conditions – for clarity of language and design.
By giving your business to the top ranking companies in our tables, you’ll be putting pressure on those at the bottom of the pile to up their game.
We don’t make any money from our tables. They are free to use, and paid for by the work that we do helping companies to produce clearer documents.
3
Leave the rest to us
We're talking to companies, regulators and government every week, campaigning to create a fairer financial industry.
We've already seen some progress – you can read about it on our blog, and you can hear about it on radio.
Research & progress
12th November 2015
You shouldn’t need a PhD to understand your home insurance
New Fairer Finance research reveals that many insurance documents are only accessible to people educated to post-graduate level. It's time for the regulator to take action.
Read more
22nd April 2014
Spare us the small print
Few read the small print. Even fewer understand it. So what's the point? Support our campaign to put an end to incomprehensible terms and conditions documents.
Read more
14th March 2014
Support our campaign: Spare us the small print
Few people read terms and conditions and many of those who do don't understand them. So what's the point?
Read more
21st April 2014
The worst banks and insurers for small print revealed
Consumer group Fairer Finance is today launching a new campaign to tackle the incomprehensible terms and conditions.
Read more
