New research platform See Me Please says insurance customers should not need to "learn your footnote language before they can understand your insurance product".   

Founder and CEO Katie McDermott, who was formerly chief digital officer for Service NSW, says the insurtech collates data from people who are blind or low vision, deaf, neurodivergent, older, or who speak English as a second language. 

During research, the volume and complexity of footnotes used to qualify premiums, inclusions and conditions "became impossible to ignore," she says. 

"Across insurers, insurance types and countries, we kept seeing the same usability problems turn up while people generated quotes and tried to compare cover,” Ms McDermott said.  

“Across insurance websites, some of the information that changes decisions is routinely pushed ... into the smallest text on the page.”  

The study on how the insurance sector uses footnotes was conducted across Australia, the UK, US and Ireland. 

See Me Please did not set out to study footnotes but kept seeing them interrupt customers trying to understand insurance.  

“People stopped mid-task, scrolled up and down, lost their place and sometimes gave up on working out what something actually cost or included.”   

It also found insurers operating under similar regulatory and commercial pressures are “making very different interface choices,” with no consistent footnote convention. “We found asterisks, superscript numbers, daggers, double daggers, carets, section signs and other symbols in active use.”  

Footnotes often materially change how a customer might assess value for money, qualifying price, cover, limits and conditions.

See Me Please says regulatory frameworks demand that information is clear, prominent, understandable and supports informed decisions, and the volume and complexity of footnotes is "a design, content and governance choice”. 

Where a footnote is genuinely necessary, it recommends “boring and predictable”. 

"Numbers are inherently ordered and easier to match than an escalating sequence of specialist symbols ... If following the note moves someone elsewhere on the page, give them a reliable way back.”

It also says if a qualification materially changes the meaning of a headline price, inclusion, exclusion, cover promise or condition, a footnote may not be the best way to communicate it.  

“The objective is not disclosure for disclosure's sake. It is a customer who can make an informed choice.”