Preneed: A Pandora's Box of Problems
I stand corrected.
A representative of the Michigan Funeral Directors Association advises that their request for proposal for a new investment advisor for the master trust has resulted in the selection of a firm that will not only assume a true fiduciary relationship to funeral directors and consumers, but that will also guide the Association…
More than one funeral director has expressed the opinion that the State Board should never have been given rule making authority. We’ll never know, but if the State Board had rulemaking authority 22 years ago, it could have implemented rules to help enforce NPS’ 1990 settlement agreement, and thereby avoided that company’s collapse. But equally…
The monks of St. Joseph Abbey received good news in their battle to sell caskets when a Federal appeals court affirmed a lower court’s decision that struck down a Louisiana law that would have required the monks to either open a licensed funeral home or get a funeral director’s license. The District Court held that the…
Three years ago we asked that question with regard to the power struggle occurring between the Missouri State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors and the Missouri Division of Professional Registration staff. That post was influenced by our experiences with preneed regulators from other states, who range from elected politicians to the revolving door bureaucrat.
They say that the devil is in the details, and that is proving true for the Obama definition of the “rich” (those families that earn more than $250,000) and the plan to fix the budget. The IRS provided some detail to the Obama plan last December when it published a proposed regulation that would increase…
If you haven’t noticed, there has been some turnover among the associations’ preneed fund managers. With the threat of additional litigation in Wisconsin, this trend could continue. But not all of the turnover has been as publicized as what we have seen in Illinois and Wisconsin. After 20 years at the helm, Merrill Lynch recently…
Both the Memorial Business Journal and the Funeral Service Insider commented last week on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s February 7th article regarding the former executive director of the Wisconsin Funeral Directors Association. Several issues were raised that should be included in future industry debate, and in particular, I would agree with Mr. Isard’s questions whether…
On January 14th, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon will be sworn in for his second term, and we are wondering whether the Governor’s plans for 2015 are influencing the direction of Missouri’s preneed reform. With commentary such as that published by the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Governor may have his eyes on a 2015…
In our prior post, we commented on the lack of detail provided by the Consumer Funeral Assurance group regarding their NPS recovery plan. We have obtained a copy of the plan, and redacted from the document correspondence that reflect names and/or contact information of recipient organizations or legislators. What is left includes a summary …
We previously discussed how the funeral home or cemetery assumes most of a preneed trust’s investment risk when selling a guaranteed preneed contract, and therefore should be afforded a role in the trust’s investment decisions (Fund Managers: Is Your O&E Coverage Current?). But in that same post, we were careful to point out…