Will putting complicated insurance and legal jargon into plain English sell more life insurance policies? Irish Life thinks so, which is why it has spent the last six months revising and rewriting all of its life insurance protection contracts. For its efforts, it has been awarded two Plain English Campaign (PEC) awards, the "Crystal Mark for Clarity" and the "Honesty Mark". The PEC marks are the product document equivalents of a company receiving an ISO 9002 award, signifying excellence and the achievement of an international standard. For financial service companies, in particular, Crystal Mark and Honesty Mark awards means that you've not only jettisoned the legal and insurance jargon, but also the ubiquitous "small print".

Lifetime, the life assurance arm of Bank of Ireland is the only other company in Ireland to receive a Crystal Mark for some of its product documents.

By the end of this year, Irish Life predicts that its other two main product ranges savings and investment and pensions will have also secured the two marks, making Irish Life the only company in Ireland, and only one of two in Ireland and Britain with both marks for their complete product ranges. (The other is another insurance company, Colonial Mutual UK.)

The Plain English Campaign (PEC) began 20 years ago in Britain to promote the use of plain English by companies and governments worldwide. A former British prime minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, engaged PEC editors to introduce plain English standards in British government departments.

The Honesty Mark is a newer award and is given to those companies that can show that nothing has been left out of documents or buried in the small print which could be a matter of contention between parties at a later stage.

Irish Life admits that achieving the Honesty Mark was a greater challenge than the Crystal Mark because it involved the rewriting of the legal and underwriting policy documents. What had been a 28-page document full of "shall deem", "thereof" and "hereunder" in which Irish Life was always "the Company" became - after a torturous period of re-writing and more re-writing - a 37-page document that carefully explained the legal obligations of the company and rights of the policyholder without resorting to archaic legal terminology. "The Company" has become a friendlier "we" and "the Proposer" has become "you" the customer.

Because these protection documents must provide medical/legal definitions of the illnesses covered by the serious illness policy (now renamed the "specified illness" policy), there was only a certain amount of rewriting that could be done.

Just in case it wasn't clear enough Irish Life further translated the medical definition by adding a layperson's note which for every illness begins: "In simpler terms . . . a heart attack (myocardial infarction) happens when an area of the heart muscle dies because it does not get enough . . ."

Even the titles of the company's protection policies had to be renamed: the term life insurance protection policies have become "life cash cover"; mortgage protection policies are now "life home cover" and the serious illness policy is now known as "specified illness" cover or home cover. The new titles better reflect the function of the contracts, says the company.

Putting the policy documents into understandable English was the core element of the exercise, but it wasn't the only standard that the Plain English Campaign demanded. Consumer panels which they set up in Britain were also asked to look at the design and presentation of the Irish Life protection booklets.

Instead of admiring the glossy, colourful brochures, with their photographs depicting smiling children and families and prominent catchwords and short, highlighted messages, "they said they found the pictures and layout to be very distracting", says Ms Siobhan Kelly, the marketing strategist assigned to the project. "They said that instead of reading the documents in a systematic way, they found themselves jumping from one image to the next and not really understanding what they had just read."

The result is a customer brochure like no other on the Irish market: there are no glossy photos, no multicolour images, catchy phrases or blocks of highlighted copy. Instead it is a serious, 50-page information document that is comprehensive and informative, but will take some time to read through, presumably with the help of the Irish Life salesperson or independent financial adviser.

Irish Life's commitment to clearly explaining the terms and conditions of its protection policies is an attempt to prevent the sort of misinformation and confusion that is endemic in the life insurance industry.

But if the industry is as committed as it says it is to transparency, and avoiding the worst excesses of the past, then Irish Life has laid down a new standard for customer information that others should be wasting no time in adopting.