Observations from the “Big Easy”

October 25, 2024/Business, Regulations/

I spent parts of 5 days and 4 nights in New Orleans earlier this week participating in the annual National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) convention. It was a time to learn new things and visit with old friends. And, while there I attended workshops, took part in some keynote speaker addresses, wandered the exposition hall, and had good off-the-record conversations with some of the highest positioned leaders of the death care world.

Since it is Friday morning when this hits your inbox I’m going to keep it short and concise on some of the impressions that I took home with me to Minnesota on Wednesday. . . I’ll probably elaborate on most of these impressions in the next couple of weeks as we move forward but for now, here goes. . . .

Interesting thoughts on the profession in general:

The outside business world sees great opportunity in the “Greater Death Care” business space. Venture Capitalists and Private Equity people were in great attendance.
Things are continuously changing, but many changes will bring their own opportunities
There is a lot of “outside money” looking to invest in Death Care.
Family firms are still in vogue, but each generation brings less families carrying the tradition on. . . leading to greater opportunities for continuing family operaters to scale if desired
One needs to assess where their company stands in relation to the greater Death Care world. . . . are you ahead of it, with it, or behind it? If one is “Behind it” market share could plummet if you have aggressive competitors.

On continuing “change”:

Keynote Speaker Amy Herman did a terrific job in pointing out that “Change is all around us“, but you sometimes have to look for it, in different ways, to see it
The above point is highlighted by the fact that I heard that over 25% of the exhibitors in the Expo Hall were first-time exhibitors. . . .That fact in itself tells of the changes coming forward
“Change is not inherently bad, it offers opportunity”
“Change” may mean refining or expanding the product offerings that funeral homes have historically offered

On Regulation:

It doesn’t seem like the Federal Trade Commission is in any hurry to finalize the “Funeral Rule”. Yet, they don’t seem in any way to want to lessen funeral homes’ burden of presenting price information to consumers.
Regardless of the FTC, price information in a “readable and understood” format on one’s website is of growing importance in funeral service.
The use of formaldehyde in embalming is still up in the air because of future potential exposure level requirements that may be implemented by OSHA. I found out regulations that were once thought to exclude funeral service still have hurdles to navigate.
The election results in less than two weeks could quite possibly make a big difference, at least for the next four years, on if the regulatory environment for funeral service gets tighter or less regulatory.

On Preneed:

Funeral Service operators seem to be increasingly unleashing Preneed to build market share. . .This has always happened, but it seems to be going on more than ever. It’s probably a combination of the funeral home wanting market share and the preneed company also striving for increased market share and policies put in place due to actual or anticipated declining face value per account.
Declining Face Value per Preneed account seems to be a front of the room thought for both commissioned agents/funeral homes and preneed companies.
I also was convinced that “Brand” is incredibly important to Preneed development. If your funeral home is not a “Brand” that consumers want, it is very difficult to get them to prearrange with you. So, targeted preneed marketing without overall “Brand” marketing will be ineffective. If you are in a competitive environment, it certainly proves the point that you must “Build your Brand”.

On Growing Disposition options:

There is no doubt that alternative options are getting play — options like green burial, alkaline hydrolysis, and natural organic reduction were all represented in some form or fashion.
I also got the impression that the alternative options were less represented at the convention than one would think from all of the consumer articles written about these “coming” options. The options of what to do with the remains of these methods as well as cremations were much more prevalent than the options themselves. This is what I would term the “Cremation or Disposition Aftermarket”. . . .Such things as Better Place Forests, Parting Stone, and Eterneva come to mind here as well as many other ideas.

On People in Funeral Service:

I continue to believe that Funeral Service has some of the greatest human beings in the world involved with it. I get a chance to talk to everybody and, quite frankly, there is nobody in the profession that I don’t like or enjoy. I don’t think I’m the only one that thinks that and, because many funeral directors are held in such high regard, it can help us get things done in the legislative world.
However, we have some ground to make up with consumers. Surveys that I was presented also show that a very few bad apples in our business have dropped the trust factor perception of funeral directors by the general public. . . .and that can be a difficult problem as we move forward.

So, there you have some initial impressions that I thought about as I arrived home on Wednesday. . . .

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