Intelligibility: Improving Customer Outcomes and Achieving Regulatory Compliance – A Guest Blog Featuring Amplifi Global

Friday 7 November 2025

Intelligibility: Improving Customer Outcomes and Achieving Regulatory Compliance – A Guest Blog Featuring Amplifi Global

ABCUL recently spoke with Amplifi Global, who the Association is pleased to be collaborating with to explore the growing importance of intelligibility in financial communications.

In this feature, we look at what intelligibility means in practice, why it matters for credit unions, and how new tools like Amplifi are helping organisations improve customer understanding and meet regulatory expectations.

ABCUL members can also register to attend a dedicated webinar with Amplifi Global this November, where the team will share practical insights and demonstrate how their AI platform supports clearer, more compliant communications.

What Is Intelligibility – and Why It Matters

‘Intelligibility’ isn’t just about readability – it’s about being understood.

Regulators now expect firms to go beyond plain language. Communications must be intelligible – meaning they can be clearly understood by the average consumer, in context, and with awareness of the consequences. As the FCA’s Consumer Duty explains, information must be:

“Able to be understood by the target audience, including the context and the consequences of the information to the reader.”

Poorly understood content can lead to customer harm, regulatory breaches, and reputational risk. It’s a growing area of focus across regulators such as the FCA, Gambling Commission, and Competition and Markets Authority, with firms now expected to demonstrate how well their customers actually understand what they’re being told.

From Readability to Real Understanding

Many organisations have long relied on readability scores such as Flesch-Kincaid to test clarity. But readability alone doesn’t equal understanding.

Short sentences and simple words can still confuse readers if the meaning or context isn’t clear. True intelligibility goes further – it measures whether someone can grasp what’s being said, understand the implications, and make informed decisions as a result. That’s why legal, compliance, and communications teams are now rethinking how they draft and review customer-facing materials – from product information and terms and conditions to internal policies.

How Amplifi Helps

Amplifi Global has developed an AI-powered platform designed to measure, manage, and improve the intelligibility of regulated and legal communications.

Using its Cognitive Risk Engine™, Amplifi analyses language complexity to assess how understandable content really is – not just how it reads. It highlights potential risk areas, suggests clearer alternatives, and helps teams ensure that every document supports transparency and informed decision-making.

By embedding intelligibility checks directly into drafting and review workflows, Amplifi helps organisations collaborate more effectively, reduce risk, and demonstrate compliance with evolving regulatory standards.

Why This Matters for Credit Unions

Credit unions are built on trust and member understanding. Ensuring communications are truly intelligible supports members in making confident financial decisions, strengthens compliance, and reinforces the sector’s reputation for fairness and transparency.

We tested a range of ABCUL Members’ savings and loan account T&Cs using Amplified Global’s Intelligibility Risk Engine.

Only 25% of those tested achieved the acceptable benchmark score the Amplified Global clients choose to apply, which is an Intelligibility Score of 70 or more (understandable to around 80% of the UK public).  Many others showed significant risk of poor consumer understanding outcomes, with almost a quarter being high risk (a score of 60 or less).

Find Out More

ABCUL members can register now to attend an exclusive Amplifi Global webinar in November, featuring:

Ewan Willars, Regulatory Lead — a policy expert with over 25 years of experience and former Director for Retail Banking at UK Finance.

Jamie Stuart, Head of Product — co-founder of Amplifi and product specialist leading the platform’s development.

The session will be hosted on Thursday 13 November at 11.30am and is exclusively for ABCUL members only. Register for the session here.