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.

 

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.

 

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• AI is everywhere.  Can it write obituaries?  Deseret News (CA)
• Centralia engineers discover possible unmarked graves near Mountain View Cemetery.  The Chronicle (WA)
• Texas Funeral Commission sues ex-staffers over public accusationsallegedly recording conversations.  KERA News, NPR of North Texas (TX)
• Funeral home shut down for failing to cremate bodies.  Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV)

 

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