Funeral homes and cremation providers have seen the revenue numbers that they bring in flatten as more consumers have continued to prefer less expensive services, such as cremation, over traditional burials for the past three decades.  And, as more and more options become available to the consumer, including options where a traditional funeral home may be cut out of the services completely, funeral homes increasingly are looking for new ways to increase the revenues to their businesses.

 

Quite frankly, looking for new product extension lines of business to the traditional funeral home is nothing new.  For three or four decades now funeral homes have added “pre-death” services such as preneed arrangements to their lines of business and have also added “post-death” items such as monument sales to their traditonal “at-need” death care options.

 

Those line-extension items have added much needed revenue to businesses that see “at-need” revenue at somewhat flat levels.

 

We recently learned of a company that has developed a “white-label” estate planning platform for funeral directors allowing them to “offer branded digital estate services to families”.  And by offering these services from the tech firm Ai Wills, its parent company, Estate Assist,  believes it can create four new revenue streams for funeral homes.

 

According to an article in Funeral Service Times of Great Britain the company believes it can create revenue applications for funeral homes in online wills, power of attorney onboarding, probate support, and digital estates.  And, all of this can be done under a funeral home’s own branding, domain, and pricing.

 

Here’s what Chris Fisher, founder of Ai Wills, had to say in the Funeral Service Times article, “A funeral director is already the trusted name a family turns to at the hardest time and questions about the will, the estate and probate land on them constantly.”

 

It’s obvious that Fisher believes that branding through local, trusted funeral homes will lead clients to his group and by offering this service funeral homes can receive some type of compensation for their effort in doing so.

 

Here’s the website for Ai Wills.

 

Funeral Director Daily take:  While this is a British company that deals with the wills and probate services of Great Britain, the concept can surely work in the United States as well.  And, I think Fisher is correct in that funeral homes are many times asked these questions, through the trust of a decedent’s family, at the time of death before an attorney is brought on board by a family in need.

 

If there is a way to use a funeral home’s good brand name to help these families onboard help for estate services I think it may be a way to add ancillary income for the funeral home.  Like anything else, however, before endorsing a product or putting a link on one’s website to a business, a funeral home needs to know the relationship that they will have with the company and the reputation and staying power of that company.

 

Bringing new revenues to a funeral homes should be, in my opinion, an important part of a funeral home’s growth strategies as we move into the future.  There are already companies doing so. . . . such as Great Britain’s Dignity Funeral Directors, a consolidator with about 570 locations across Great Britain.

 

Dignity Funeral Directors has purchased the company Farewill from whose website you can not only schedule estate and will procedures but make pre-arrangements and plan funerals as well.  Here is the Farewill website.

 

Services such as Ai Wills may or may not mesh with the strategic plans of your business. . . . However, I think it is very smart to always be on the lookout for consumer end-of-life services where a funeral home may be able to help and receive income for doing so.  By doing so, in a manner in which you can be helpful, it will not only create a greater customer experience for your clientele but may also bring more income into your fold  —  and both of those results will prove useful in growing your business.

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• Would you choose “Human composting” over a traditional burial.  Video news story.  KITV – Island News – Honolulu (HI)
• Christopher Holt and Muareen Kreinen elected as 2026-2028 “At Large Representatives” to NFDA Board of Directors.  NFDA
• 19th Century cemetery gets state grant to help with upkeep.  Video news story and print article.  KWQC TV – Quad Cities (IA-IL)

 

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