Essential letter and e-mail writing skills for insurance professionals

Speaker: Jeff Heasman CELTA, LL.B, LL.M, Jeff Heasman Training & Consulting

Event Overview:

The letters and emails that a company produces are its ‘public face’. However, very little formal training is devoted towards the fundamental issue of email and letter writing skills. This is a practical session that focuses on key areas such as: assessing the specific aims and objectives of correspondence, email etiquette, form, style and layout of correspondence, the importance of correct spelling, punctuation and grammar and the pitfalls of getting it wrong, commonly confused words in insurance and the importance of correct word placement in a sentence so as not to change the meaning.

Jeff will also look at the language of delivering bad or unexpected news, the language of persuasion and the language of advice and reassurance to retain confidence, regulatory requirements for plain English, how to achieve plain English in correspondence whilst still getting the message across and how to paraphrase complicated regulatory and legal requirements to a customer to ensure understanding and avoid concern. Throughout the course, participants will be asked to proofread and edit letters to create perfect versions.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this event, the delegate will be able to identify:

• the need to properly assess the aims and objectives of correspondence and plan appropriately before drafting

• the appropriate styles, form and language for the different types of correspondence, depending on whether the aim is to, for example, provide advice or to persuade a third party

• the importance of plain language and be able to identify commonly confused words, as well as the pitfalls

• the need for proofreading and editing to produce perfect correspondence

• the importance of plain language and use paraphrasing skills to communicate complicated matters in a clear and concise manner.

Speaker profile

Jeff Heasman is a qualified English language trainer with many years of experience working in the legal and insurance industries. He is a former senior liability adjuster with Crawford and Company and former litigation executive.

Jeff has taught business English and the language of international negotiations to company directors and MBA students in Spain, as well as having been Dean of the Faculty of Law and a lecturer in the law of torts at Cavendish University in Zambia. He has provided training in insurance law and insurance English to some of the world's most prestigious organisations and has been a tutor in academic and legal English to undergraduate and postgraduate students at Swansea University in the UK.

Jeff has overseen the accreditation and operation of legal English testing centres across Europe, Scandinavia, South America, Asia and Africa. He has also provided in-house seminars to many of the world's leading insurers and brokers.

In addition to providing training services, Jeff has also been working with insurance organisations to carry out readability audits and edits to key documentation such as policy wordings, explanatory material and advertisements.