We continue to roll out the earnings reports of the public death care companies and today is no exception. Today we tell you about one of the quieter companies that is starting to make a name for themselves as they grow. That company is Utah based Security National Financial Corporation (SNFC) and divisions of the company are involved in mortuaries, cemeteries, funeral funding through insurance assignments, and preneed insurance. In essence, from our point of view, while still small by […]
In late October Assurant hinted that they will be divesting what they call their Global Preneed business. That segment of their business consists of preneed funeral insurance products and Final Need insurance products. In reporting the company’s 3rd Quarter financial results, CEO Alan Colberg gave another hint as to the Global Preneed business potentially disappearing from the Assurant portfolio of businesses. He did not mention Global Preneed at all when he said of 3Q results, “Our third quarter 2020 performance […]
Last week Assurant, the large financial conglomerate with operations in 21 countries, announced that they would acquire mobile device software as a service (SaaS) business HYLA. You can read about that in this Associated Press release. In conjunction with that announcement, Assurant also made other announcements including a strategy to divest themselves of what they term their Global Preneed Division. Assurant has been in the preneed business for over 50 years and you can read about that division here. Here […]
Yesterday Funeral Director Daily published an article about cemeteries and in that article we made the assertion that the COVID experience of 2020 will probably have some type of long-term effect on funerals going forward. That statement was made mostly in reference to what has happened with funeral attendance due to the social distancing practices that have been imposed from place to place. It’s been my experience that when an individual is forced to change a habit, sometimes that forced […]
In today’s Afternoon Edition we will provide you with some articles that came out over the weekend. There is probably something for everybody’s interest in these articles as we always find that it is interesting to catch up with what is going on in other parts of the United States or in other parts of the world. Here’s what we have today: North Carolina among the last states to make death records electronic. North Carolina has, according to this article […]
Smith Family Funeral Homes of North Little Rock, Arkansas announced last week that they have acquired American Home Life Insurance Company, also of North Little Rock. Interestingly enough, American Home Life Insurance Company was founded by the grandfather of Smith Family Funeral Homes current President Jeff Smith. Smith was quoted in this article from Arkansas Business, “. . . . (we) had a strong desire to continue what my grandad started. We’ve been very successful with growing the funeral homes […]
Ask ten different consumers and you will get ten different opinions on “insurance”. Especially, life insurance. Some think it is necessary, some think it is a waste of time, some love the peace of mind it can bring, some will say let my survivors deal with the money after my death. You get the idea. . . and when it means spending money on something that today’s “show me what it does for me today” consumers sometimes demand, the art […]
Among the articles that we feature in today’s Afternoon Edition is a press release from the Unum Company. Unum, an insurance company, says in this release that the coronavirus pandemic has changed insurance needs of families. The results of their survey indicated that 41% of Americans say that the pandemic has changed the way that they handle their family finances and 22% indicate that they are considering increasing their life insurance during the coming year. Finally, 48% say that the […]
The other day we received a press release announcing that “The Domani Group joins forces with Homesteaders Life Company”. In that release, which you can read here, it announced “The Domani Group, a leader in preneed and aftercare solutions for funeral homes, is pleased to announce it is joining forces with Homesteaders Life Company.” This announcement came on the heels of our story on Monday that mentioned Providence Equity Partners and their experiencing in partnering funeral technology companies to bring […]
In the last couple of months or so I’ve heard from funeral home owners, or heard on a webinar, that the loss of revenue on a per case basis has been anywhere from about 9% to almost 40% in North America. Even the public companies, such as Service Corporation International and Carriage Services, acknowledged in their latest quarterly reports that their revenues per case have dropped over 8%. It is almost universally believed and recognized that this drop in per […]
