Citizens Inc., the Austin, Texas, based public company that delves in the preneed funeral insurance market among other products announced a slight earnings per share improvement for the entire company with their 1st Quarter 2020 results over their results for Q1 2019.

The company has a Life Insurance segment that primarily issues ordinary whole life insurance and endowment policies in the United States and in U.S. dollar-denominated amounts to foreign residents in more than 20 countries through independent marketing consultants.  However, it is not that segment, but what they call their Home Service Insurance Segment, that interests those of us in the death care industry.

Citizens Home Service Insurance Segment provides preneed and final expense policies to individuals primarily in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas.  Some of these policies are sold and serviced through funeral homes in those areas.  It is this segment that we like to look at as to their trends in the preneed market.

Citizen’s reported insurance premiums for the Home Service Insurance Segment, which includes preneed, of $11.498 million for the period covering the 1st Quarter of 2020.  This is slightly down from the same period of a year ago when they listed their sales in this segment at $11.550 million.

As we have seen in other companies in the preneed field, this sales dip during January, February, and March 2020 is a similar result and may indicate the problems associated in getting in front of potential clients once the “stay at home” orders were issued in late March 2020.

The company does say in this 1Q 2020 report from Yahoo Finance that they have moved to an 85% virtual workforce and are providing tools to work in this environment as well as revising operations accordingly.

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