06 May 2025

  • Financial Services

The curse of knowledge – ready to break the spell?

Four people sat around a table having a conversation.

In two upcoming webinars, we’ll share how to test for and improve consumer comprehension. This blog describes why that’s still important and urgent. The job on Consumer Understanding is far from done.

You’re all cursed.

I’m cursed too. We’re all under the same spell: we think that other people know what we know.

There’s no shame in it. It’s the curse of knowledge, and it’s rife in Financial Services.

Obvious, to some

I mean – it’s pretty obvious what an annuity is. The difference between life insurance and life assurance is obvious. Costs and charges are different things, obviously.

Here’s what customers think

“It’s all banking talk. They’re talking to each other.”

“You’re blinding me with science, here we go again”

“Ok well I’ve read all that and… I haven’t got a clue”

“I’d take this document and paste it into Chat GTP (sic)”

Those are snippets from recent user research. We were testing how well customers understood some documents they’d been sent.

Not everyone is so lost. But more people are more baffled than you might think. We see and hear confusion like that routinely, nearly two years after the Consumer Duty came into effect. To make sense of our products, our customers are reaching for AI. That’s a worry. And it’s a sign that – despite the progress – the job on Consumer Understanding is far from done.

Many firms don’t see the problem, partly because consumer confusion doesn’t show up in quantitative data.

The eye-opening remedy

There’s a reliable remedy for the curse of knowledge in FS: seeing confused customers with your own eyes.

A report won’t break the spell. Nor will a blog. You need to see it. Here’s what one of our clients said, after watching user research.

Our team has decades of experience between them. Most of this is second nature to us. Stuff you take for granted. But we saw in the research – it was completely alien to [customers]. Some of it was really eye opening, painful to watch at times.

I know product development in FS is hard enough. But the pain isn’t demoralising – it’s energising. The conversation moves quickly on to how we can improve things for them. And it stimulates ideas.

Reassuring rigour

To have this effect, your researchers need to use credible methods to test understanding. Then you can’t deny what you’re seeing. It creates a sense of openness – assumptions and subjectivity fade away.

It’s valuable to have rigorous evidence to support the findings. Systematic research, backed up by empirical, independent evidence and presented using prototypes and video clips of research participants – it’s really compelling

Head of Governance

Ready to break the spell?

Our Practice Director, Stuart Tayler, is leading two webinars to describe our approach.

  • Part one: How to test for Consumer Understanding, is on Wednesday 21st May, 2pm-2:45pm.
  • Part two: How to design for comprehension, is two weeks later, on Wednesday 4th June, 2pm-2:45pm.

Sign up for Stuart’s free webinars here

Find out more about the events

Why now?

Good consumer understanding underpins many of the FCA’s key concerns right now, for example:

  • Investing and wealth: meeting price and value obligations, and the effective delivery of Targeted Support
  • Protection: in its market study into pure protection insurance, the FCA wants to feel more confident that consumers understand the products they are buying
  • Consumer finance: do firms’ digital tools sufficiently help consumers to understand credit agreements?

Learn more about The curse of knowledge – ready to break the spell?

Stu Charlton

Reach out to Stu Charlton

Strategic Director

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