Shakespeare’s phrases are better understood by the public than financial jargon – despite being 400 years old – new research suggests.

To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, Sunlife showed 1,010 people a series of Shakespeare phrases and a series of financial terms.

The result was that on average nine out of ten (87%) understood the Shakespeare phrases well enough to be able to explain them to someone else.

In comparison, less than two thirds (61%) could explain the meaning of the financial terms to someone else.

For five of the fifteen terms – level term, indemnity, Consumer Price Index, Annual equivalent Rate and Non-disclosure - less than half of those questioned could explain them.

The result comes as the ABI last week called for a new system of explaining financial terms to consumers and called for jargon to be scrapped.

Ian Atkinson, head of brand at SunLife, said: “Our research shows that financial services terms are just too complicated. We shouldn’t be in a situation where less than two thirds of people understand terms that are being used frequently in the documents for insurance products they are buying.

“Shakespeare had the right idea – when he wanted to get his point across and couldn’t find the right word, he created one! And that is exactly what we have done.

“We have created the term ‘straightfordable’ which simply and concisely explains what we do here at SunLife – we want to make financial services straightforward and affordable and, although we know we have work to do, we believe we're moving in the right direction.”