Preneed

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When the State Board first discussed the seller records proposal in December 2015, the disbursements records drew complaints from industry members that the examination process was delving too deeply into how funeral homes were conducting their business.   Some comments were directed at whether examiners would review statements of goods and services to determine if consumers…

In a prior post, we used Allan Sloan’s article on the Treasury bond market to discuss the impact on preneed insurers and their funeral home clients.  The Treasury market has forced preneed insurers to lower their policy returns, which has a direct impact on the profitability of funeral homes.  To make insurance funding more profitable…

Missouri’s preneed funeral law imposes time requirements on funeral homes that accept consumer funds.  For funeral homes using depository accounts to fund preneed contracts, the funeral home must deposit consumer funds with the bank within 10 days.  Funeral homes using insurance to fund preneed contracts must remit the consumers funds to the insurance company within…

When the Missouri State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors met June 30th to discuss a proposed rule defining new record keeping requirements for preneed sellers, one Board member spoke a sentiment that many funeral directors share: keep it simple, stupid.   The Board member suggested that consumer receipt records could be as simple as…

A local Kansas City television station recently ran a story about a consumer’s complaint that his preneed contract did not cover “surprise fees”.   The consumer had purchased the preneed contract from a Kansas City funeral home/cemetery combo where he had also purchased a grave space.   One fact regarding the preneed contract that jumped out…

A preneed client recently complained about preneed shortfalls they were experiencing on trust funded contracts.  We went back to our 2014 blog post (The Factors Contributing to Preneed Shortfalls: Investment Return and Operator’s Performance Costs) and began an analysis of those factors.  Since the ‘culprit’ is usually poor investment returns, we started with…

The first record described in the proposed Missouri recordkeeping regulation could actually require preneed sellers to maintain three, maybe four, sets of journals:

(1) receipt and disbursement journals containing a record of deposits to and withdrawals from both preneed trusts and preneed joint accounts, specifically identifying the date, source, and description of each item deposited…

The Missouri State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors and the Board’s staff are engaged in an awkward exercise of establishing audit policies for the state’s preneed industry. The staff, employees of the Division of Professional Registration, must take the lead in making recommendations to the Board. The Board then must approve the recommendations, or…

The MFT did not catch a break with the court assigned to its lawsuit against the Missouri State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors and Catholic Fraternal Life.   The hearing scheduled for September 28th was continued for another four weeks, and in the meantime, the parties continue to file evidentiary discovery requests.  The Association’s…