Preneed: A Pandora's Box of Problems
The Saturday edition of the Kansas City Star includes a section titled “Faith” that is devoted to the issues of religion. A few weeks ago, Star reporter Helen Gray wrote two different Faith articles regarding local funeral trends: cremation and one funeral operation’s focus on working closer with churches.
The cremation article offered the…
As reported by the Memorial Business Journal*, the Illinois Funeral Directors Association has taken back the helm. For the past three years, the IFDA has been a floundering ship in risk of sinking. The master trust that paved the Association’s growth, has been threatening to bring it down. The IFDA took a crucial step…
Blame it on the economy, or on ‘unfavorable secular trends’, but as cremation rates continue to rise, operators need to consider their General Price List and their non-declinable basic service fee. In many parts of the country, competition has driven the price of the direct cremation far below the charge that the funeral home requires…
Not that close, even from the 30,000-foot view.
That’s our assessment of the Morningstar analysis of preneed and its impact on the death care industry. In “Dark Clouds for the Death-Care Industry”, a stock analyst attempted to explain the preneed transaction, and then provide an assessment of the impact of preneed on the profitability of…