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Most funeral directors would be hard pressed to calculate what investment return their preneed trust is producing.  Regular deposit and distribution activity makes computation of investment returns difficult.  The more frequent the activity, the harder it is to compute the return.  Accordingly, it would be easier for the funeral director to look at paid in…

The July 25th Marketplace Morning Report on National Public Radio included a segment called Allan Sloan’s lessons on bond investments. Mr. Sloan is a business columnist for the Washington Post who recently wrote that the current Treasury bond market is “out of whack”, and poses a risker investment than the stock markets. Mr. Sloan…

For an industry that has been dependent on interest income, the past 9 years have been tough on the death care industry.  Interest rates started to decline 9 years ago, with the bottom hitting in 2008.   Zero interest rates forced death care fiduciaries to diversify into equity investments, but trusts have experienced a sideways market…

For Fed watchers, last week’s announcement signaled a subtle warning that interest rates will likely begin rising by the Summer of 2015.  Since September of 2012, Federal Reserve statements have warned that interest rates would remain unchanged for “a considerable time” after the nation’s economic recovery strengthened.  The reference to “a considerable time” was dropped…

It has been almost ten years since the return on Government bonds fell below 5%.  But bond returns did not hit bottom until four years later when the sub-prime mortgage market collapsed.  Those conditions threatened the nation’s credit markets, and so, in 2008, the Federal Reserve Board initiated a stimulus program involving the purchase of…

Among the rule proposals suggested by the Division of Professional Registration to the State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors was the following definition of “External Investment Advisor”:

any licensed, qualified investment advisor approved and authorized by the trustee of the preneed trust and who holds no personal interest in any assets of the preneed …

A Missouri preneed auditor recently requested an explanation from a client why certain accounts were underfunded.  The handful of accounts were “underfunded” by varying amounts of a few dollars to twenty dollars.  The common fact with each was an initial deposit or substantial deposit in the month preceding the Federal Chairman’s remarks that …

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…