ANZ
Finalist: Best Plain English Turnaround 2013
Memorandum of Mortgage
Judges' comment
Compared to the original laborious document, this rewrite is a cool drink on a hot day — easy and a pleasure to deal with. This sort of information needs to be clear to be useful to the public.
This is an impressive document, which meets a high standard. It’s been improved in every way. Structure, layout, white space, and expression are all much clearer and plainer, which will benefit ANZ’s readers enormously. The headings clearly state the main messages of the document, making pages easy to scan for key information.
Media statement
ANZ is delighted to be a finalist for Best Plain English turnaround for the ANZ Memorandum of Mortgage.
As New Zealand's largest home lender, we register over 36,000 mortgages a year. Our new mortgage memorandum shows it is possible to create a customer-driven, plain-language legal document that explains the rights and responsibilities of all parties clearly.
In rewriting our mortgage memo, we wanted to avoid specialised words and phrases unique to law, but often unfamiliar and confusing to customers. We culled long sentences, complex paragraphs and numbering.
A real turning point was to throw out the excessively formal tone. Our mortgage dispenses with the idea of 'fine print', using an open layout with larger fonts and margins, and lots of headings to help signpost important information.
Our memo is now clearer and more accessible. This award recognises the hard work our plain English team and the efforts we’ve made to improve communications with our customers.
Fred Ohlsson
Managing Director, ANZ Retail and Business Banking