It’s the end of summer in Minnesota and lots of our friends get ready to embark on the journey to warmer climates soon.  So, it is a good time to say good-bye to our summer Minnesotans and wish them well until we see them again next Spring. Angie and I did that last week and went out to a micro-brewery for pizza and drinks with some neighbor couples.

When you get to be our ages the talk sometimes takes on the realities of enrolling in Social Security and Medicare.  As our conversation turned that way I was surprised to hear that every couple we were with had attended a recent seminar, generally put on by an insurance agency or financial planner, to learn more about their options for those programs.

When I asked, somewhat tongue in cheek, if they had been attending the preneed funeral seminars too, they all said that they haven’t been invited yet.  That was surprising to me because they were in or over the age brackets  that I generally started sending invitations to when I operated our funeral home — 55 years and older.

And then I received my weekly recap of articles from Great Britain’s Funeral Service Times where the lead article had this headline, “Prepaid funeral plan sales surpass 100,000 in record H1 (Half-year) of 2025”.  The article featured statistics furnished by the National Association of Funeral Plan Providers (NAFPP).

Turns out that in Great Britain and Wales, which had a combined 568,613 deaths in 2024, a total of 111,887 funeral plans were sold in the first half of 2025.  The article states that is a 13.7% increase over the same period of 2024 and it marked the first time a half-year total was over the 100,000 mark.

Just to state a numerical situation, if the country totaled the same amount of preneed plans sold in the 2nd half of 2025 preneed plans would total about 39% of the number of deaths recorded the previous year (568,613 deaths in 2024).

It should also be noted that during the first-half of 2025, existing preneed plans funded over 62,000 funeral services in the UK — about 18.3% of all services during that time period according to the NAFPP.

According to the article “The figures reflect the sector’s continued expansion following full regulation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). During the period, 787 existing plans were transferred from non-regulated entities to NAFPP member firms. These customers are now covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and Financial Ombudsman Service.”  (The Financial Conduct Authority started regulating fuenral plans in Great Britain in July 2022)

Barry Floyd, Chairman of the NAFPP had these comments about the increased preneed planning in Great Britain, “. . With consumer confidence in the product buoyed by the reassurance provided by our regulator, more people than ever are aware of the advantages. The first half of 2025 has set a new benchmark for the prepaid funeral planning sector, with record new plan sales, strong performance across all indicators, and customer preferences evolving toward flexible solutions.”

The NAFPP also reported an increase in the use of its plan tracing service, with around 7,000 enquiries expected this year. The service is used by families who cannot locate funeral paperwork following a relative’s death.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  Two things come to mind when I think about our dinner discussion and this report out of Great Britain.  First of all, people really do want to know what their options are — they may not be ready to purchase as indicated that our friends had not yet applied for Social Security and/or purchased Medicare supplement coverage.  However, they are all going to the seminars to learn about their options.

Secondly, when it comes to preneed funeral coverage people are willing to step up and purchase the product when they have the confidence that their investment will be there for them in the future.  When it was an unregulated product in Great Britain sales lagged the pace where they are today.

Another thought that I had from our discussion was that our friends had never really thought through the possibility of their death care choices.  I’m guessing that they all have life insurance and other financial issues under control but they all told me that they would be “cremated and have no idea what would be done with their ashes”.

I mentioned that the options have become many and varied  — and I pointed out products such as Better Place Forests and Parting Stone.  Interestingly enough, those mentions caught their attention and made them think of possible alternatives to simply scattering ashes.  From that short discussion I realized that the Death Care profession does not seem to be keeping up with giving alternatives to families that choose cremation.  And, if the potential clients don’t know about the alternatives they will not be purchasing them.

I think whether we realize it or not, Death Care is in a new world today. With so much coming at once and so much happening in the streaming world of funerals, in the digital media of advertising, in the online revenue options, in the venue options, in disposition options, in online preneed options, and on and on for funeral homes and cremation providers, that sometimes we have not taken the appropriate measures to let our future clientele know what we can offer.

I further think it is imperative that funeral and cremation providers be able to get in front of the future consumers much like the Medicare supplement providers are doing.  It’s my opinion that a lack of effort in hosting groups at your funeral home and letting them know of all the options, including preneed, will result in a lower revenue per case than could be received with a well-informed consumer. . . . if the uninformed consumer chooses your firm at all or simply goes with a Direct Cremation with No Services provider because they don’t know of the options available at your firm.

If you are interested in creating seminars that will give your area consumers the knowledge that they need to make informed funeral, cremation, and preneed purchases give Patrick Zalusky and Laker Planning Services a call.

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“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”

Last week the country of Denmark once again set in place an increased age for receiving government sponsored retirement benefits.  As you can see in this article those citizens of Denmark born after 1970 will not be able to access this benefit until age 70 — up from the current age of 67, with gradual increases to the 70 mark moving forward.

As you may know, the United States, in most instances, lets citizens receive pre-retirement benefits at age 62, full benefits at age 67, and increased beginning benefits at age 70.  For each year that one delays taking those benefits an increase of 8% on your beginning benefit is earned. Here’s a chart on how those benefits might look like at different ages for someone set to receive $2500 of benefits at age 62.  (Note:  Annual Cost of Living Adjustments are not figured into the Cumulative Value at Age 80)

While the United States life expectancy rate for children born today sits at 77.4 years overall, the life expectancy rate for someone who has lived to age 65 sits at 83 years for males and 86 years for females.  So, calculating only until age 80 may be short and one who collects the higher amount at age 70 may eventually pass the 67 year old in lifetime benefits as they continue to age.

While I picked the $2,500 figure somewhat out of the air, according to the Social Security Administration, maximum initial benefits for today’s retirees in 2025 are $2,831 at age 62, $4,018 at age 67, and $5,108 at age 70.

How Does the Retirement Age and Life Expectancy figure into your Preneed Marketing?:

I will give you a couple of thoughts on how I looked at Preneed marketing and what worked for us.  To understand my thought process you need to know that I came into the business world the same year that Ronald Reagan became President and First Lady Nancy Reagan staunchly supported an anti-drug program in the United States named “Just Say No”.  Part of the “Just Say No” program was to educate children at younger ages than ever before about the negative aspects of illicit drug use.  The thought process was letting them know at younger ages simply gave more awareness and importance to the program.

• I picked up on that younger and younger education and eventually realized that we should not simply be waiting for people to walk in the funeral home door who had been told that setting aside money for an eventual funeral was a way to legally “spend-down” to help with government paid nursing home care.  Oddly enough, prior to about 1980 the thought of “soliciting” people to pre-fund their eventual funeral was thought of by many funeral operators, including myself, as potentially bad public relations that could harm your business.

• About 1990 we became bold and started sending out mailers for funeral pre-arrangement to those 65 years of age and older.  Prior to that it was only the insurance companies themselves who sent out the mailers.  That thought process kept the funeral home from looking “too solicitous”.

• In 2001 we started doing monthly small-group, one-hour seminars, aimed at those 65 and older.  We bought mailing lists, composed the letter ourselves, and offered a $20 restaurant gift certificate per couple for attending and found, through trial and error, that if we sent out 200 mailers, we would have about 10-12 couples attend which was not too many . . .  but our closing rate on those couples was about 70% — meaning we sold about 12-16 policies from that meeting.  We used a very simple in-house developed questionaire that led couples into asking for an appointment with a pre-arrangement counselor.

• One thing we learned over time was to pre-screen our mailing list and as we refined it our results became even better.  I remember that one of the big items that we screened for was “home ownership”.  People that didn’t own a home did not get an invitation to a seminar.

• At that time we were doing about 160 at-need cases per year so the seminars brought in about 70-80% of our at-need volume.  We realized that this would grow volume over time.

• A few years later we experimented with the Nancy Reagan philosophy of trying even “earlier ages” and was surprised at the number of still-working couples who took a morning off of work to attend the seminars upon invitation.  We also moved our philosophy of saying this is something “retired people” should plan for to bringing a mantra of “when you are starting to think of retirement, you should not only plan for when you will take Social Security, but you should also think of your will, your legacy, and your funeral arrangements”.   A big part of our seminars was the suggestion telling potential clientele that they should have serious discussions about their choice of cremation or earth burial and where the permanent memorialization of their cremated remains or casketed body would be.  We found this “optionality” of decisions moved people to the discussion stage.

• I found that having the discussion about permanent memorialization probably moved more people to pre-arrange than did the discussion of cremation/earth burial.  In many instances family lots were in different cemeteries and the couple needed the discussion to decide which to make use of. . . . or, our closest National Veterans Cemetery was 140 miles away and a discussion about using that cemetery versus a local cemetery often was a reason that couples took up the conversation.

• Over the years we were able to move our preneed business to a situation where we had a one to one ratio with at need calls which I think, in today’s world, should be a minimum ratio for businesses that want to grow.

• While we did have acquisitions to increase our call volume, the decision to make Preneed as big a priority as At-need played a major role in our organic growth over time.  My brother, Dave, took on this mantle and it went from a part-time gig to a more than full-time one when we needed to hire a 2nd part-time agent to folow up on seminar leads.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  My direct take on the question posed in the title of this article is that retirement age should not affect pre-need.  My reason for saying that is because you should already be prospecting the “before retirement” cohort of potential clients.

On the other hand, it may make a slight difference on the potential client’s reaction to your lead generation.  They may think that “they have plenty of time to do this” because retirement is far off.

If you don’t do monthly seminars I would suggest a call to my friend Patrick Zalusky at Laker Planning (507.327.6938) to get some pointers on how to start.

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Funeral Director Daily recently learned that holders of pre-need funeral plans from Safe Hands Plans, Ltd. will initially receive about 10% of their investment back as authorities have “clawed back” funds from resources left when the company was declared insolvent in 2022.  It is estimated that 46,000 consumers had invested in the British plan to pre-plan and pre-pay one’s funeral expenses.

This recent article from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) indicates that “planholders could receive initial repayments – of between 8.5pence and 12.5pence for every pound they lost – by the end of June.”  That would be the equivilent of receiving 8.5 to 12.5 cents on every American dollar invested.

Funeral plans are now regulated by the British Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) but Safe Hands Plans was one of the firms that was in the business before the regulation was started — Safe Hands Plans collapsed about 4 months before the FCA began their regulation of the industry.

FRP Advisors, who is the government authorized authority trying to recover funds has said that the process with Safe Hands Plans “had been “complex” and had required extensive legal action both in the UK and abroad – including in the Cayman Islands – to trace funds that are due to creditors”.

In any regard the linked article tells of consumers who are not happy with the results and consumers who have suffered significant loss alienating them with the funeral and pre-planning industries.

One consumer made this comment in the linked article, “I’m disappointed.  Somebody else has to now find the money and arrange my funeral when I’m not here because I would never buy another [funeral plan].”

Great Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) “confirmed it was progressing on an active criminal investigation into alleged fraud by Safe Hands Plans Limited and its parent company SHP Capital Holdings Limited”.

Related — The British Financial Conduct Authority

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  I think the regulations of funeral planning in Great Britain is a big step in the right direction.  Unfortunately, the Safe Hands Plan case has given negative publicity to a generally good product and what should be a smart decision by British consumers.  It’s a public relations issue that our British friends in the pre-need market need to overcome to win over the trust of their consumers going forward.

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Earlier this week we learned that Funeral Directors Life (FDL), based in Abilene, Texas,  was approved to sell preneed insurance in the state of Virginia.  As you can read from this press release, that announcement, following an earlier announcement making Michigan a legal Funeral Directors Life state, now makes Funeral Directors Life preneed available in 48 states and the District of Columbia.

Here’s what Kris Seale, President and CEO of Funeral Directors Life, said in prepared remarks in the press release, “Our team is excited about this incredible news.  We have a mission to be the best, most-respected provider of service to the funeral profession, and this news ensures we continue to honor our mission. We look forward to partnering with Virginia funeral homes to provide reliable and flexible preneed funeral offerings to improve their businesses and help them serve families well.”

Again, according to the press release, “Since 1981, FDL has helped funeral homes grow by aligning funeral homes’ business goals with preneed funeral strategies. The company also developed advanced preneed sales software, DIGicon®, and other industry-leading technology solutions to reduce data entry, save time per contract, and improve the preneed to at-need experience with software integrations.”

You can learn more about Funeral Directors Life at their website here.

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