In what is becoming a growing trend among larger funeral home operators Anthem Partners announced in late September that they had formed a strategic alliance with Premier Preneed Marketing and National Guardian Life (NGL) that they believe will help grow their preneed business.

According to a statement in the press release from Jim La Mar, Anthem’s Director of Business Development, “This association will allow our firms to serve more families with robust product enhancements backed by the financial strength of NGL and innovative tools and exceptional resources from Premier Preneed, the fastest growing preneed marketing organization in the country.  We look forward to leveraging the many possibilities our relationship with Premier and NGL will provide.”

NGL’s Senior Vice-President of Preneed Sales and Business Development Cameron Black made this comment in the same press release, “NGL is very humbled and excited to be the preneed carrier for Anthem Partners’ western portfolio of funeral homes.  It’s these exciting partnerships that allow us to help create more opportunities for families to see the benefits of pre-planning.” 

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  Aligning relationships with one preneed partner is a trend we are seeing at Funeral Director Daily.  And when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense for both the consumer-facing funeral and cemetery businesses as well as the preneed insurance companies.

For the funeral home companies a strategic alliance can probably help them increase commission percentages, leverage a potential higher growth rates to allow policies better long-term growth, and help with marketing expenses and customer acquisition for the sale of such policies.  All of these options should allow for higher profits for the aligned funeral home partners.

For the insurance companies these partnerships put forward aligned goals and results for both the funeral homes and the preneed companies.  The sacrifice of higher commissions and potential higher costs of marketing can be overcome with the idea that they will get 100% of the funeral home/cemetery company’s preneed business.  That’s a combination that they hope will increase the numbers of policies sold, and generate more profits, in the marketplace by their specific business.

In the last 18 months of so we have seen these relationships develop, seemingly more often than before, between consumer facing death care companies and preneed insurance providers.  Here’s some of the alignments we have been notified about and a story or press release on such:

Regardless of the size of your funeral home, it certainly would not hurt to ask preneed providers what benefits that they may be able to offer if you made them your exclusive provider of preneed services.  Like the big companies in Death Care, there may be synergies and opportunities to have some sense of linked goals that might benefit both of you.

More news from the world of Death Care:

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