World-wide niche insurance conglomerate Assurant reported slightly higher Net Operating Income for the 2017 2nd Quarter over the same quarter last year.They also reported higher income by 13% in the Global Pre-Need segment over the same quarter one year ago.

Pre-Need income was up according to the company statement due to higher fee and investment income.  They also note that increased income was driven mainly by increased volume in Canada.

Assurant also reports that, according to the same quarter last year, Pre-Need Face Sales were slightly down in 2Q 2017 which, they indicate,  reflects a lower volume of pre-need policies.

The company, according to their statement, believes that going forward Pre-Need income and earnings will increase across North America due to alignment with market leaders and operational efficencies.

You can read their report here:

Funeral Director Daily take:  As you hear me say all the time, it is important to see what the big companies are doing in the business and try to make sense out of how that fits into your individual firm.  Many times you can glean important information from these reports.

One thing that sticks out to me in this report is their statement that “Pre-Need Face Sales was slightly down . . which reflects a lower volume of pre-need policies”.  It is interesting to me that the dollar volume is down due to less policies being sold rather than, at least they don’t say this, individual policies being of less “average dollar” value.

Less policies being sold may be indicative of a trend of younger “baby–boom” clients not purchasing pre-need simply because they are more apt to have money in a financial plan to pay for a funeral as compared to a smaller dollar per policy reason which might be indicative of these people choosing cremation over traditional burial.  The rate of baby-boomers purchasing policies may be an interesting trend to watch going forward.[wpforms id=”436″ title=”true” description=”true”]