Cura are known as the special risks experts that are helping to improve accessibility within the insurance sector. For years, they have championed the calls for fair access to insurance for people with health conditions. Cura’s work has seen many people that have been declined insurance elsewhere, to have the vital protection that they and their family need.
The achievements have been possible through the medical and underwriting knowledge held by Cura’s advisers and the determination of many insurers to ensure that their offerings are fair and inclusive.
Towards the end of 2019, Alan and Kathryn sat down and saw an area of accessibility that they feel is being overlooked. Alan recalls that moment last year “It suddenly struck us that we are constantly working to improve accessibility in arranging protection insurance and we are making great strides in doing this. But, what about that very first part of the journey? What about people who cannot access insurance due to communication barriers? Dyslexia, deafness, blindness, physical conditions that restrict access to computers and telephones, English as a second language. These all present barriers to getting advice and understanding the information within key features documents and policy conditions.”
At the start of this year we began consultations with organisations about how we could develop some best practices for the whole industry to address these barriers.
Kathryn explains “We believe that this is an essential area of inclusivity that needs to be given clear focus. For us, an easy and essential way for us to improve Cura’s services has been adding Recite Me to our website in June of this year. This language and accessibility bar enables users to have documents read aloud to them, to download text as an MP3 file, change fonts, colours, sizes, to translate into over 100 different languages and has a fully integrated dictionary and thesaurus.
There are still many steps for us to take, I’m currently starting a British Sign Language course so that I can ‘speak’ the language that some of our clients use. Even though I will not be fluent and I certainly will not be perfect, this will demonstrate to our clients that their needs are our priority.”
Notes for editors
You can see this software at work in a short video by Kathryn at https://www.specialrisksbureau.co.uk/accessibility/
For more information contact:
Kathryn Knowles, Cura Financial Services 07766 334862
Michael Halpin, Recite Me 0191 432 8092
About Cura Financial Services
Cura specialise in helping people with medical conditions, high risk occupations, hazardous travel and sports, to get good value protection insurance. Owners Alan and Kathryn Knowles are known as part of the UK’s leading specialist protection advisers, with a passion for building fairer access to insurance within the insurance sector. As the ‘go to’ experts for six financial networks, hundreds of introducers and a number of charities, they are helping not just their own clients but also helping their peers to fulfil their clients protection needs.
