The clock is on for the second round of Missouri preneed audits financial examinations, and the Missouri Division of Professional Registration wants to avoid the slow start that plagued the process 5 years ago. Although the State Board has yet to approve the Division’s proposals for seller recordkeeping and the scope of the exams, exam
state board of embalmers and funeral directors
Missouri Preneed Seller Records: Receipt Journal
By Bill Stalter on
Posted in Compliance, Recordkeeping
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…
Missouri Seller Records: The State Board Proposal
By Bill Stalter on
At its March meetings, the State Board again received from the Division staff a rule proposal that would define the minimum records that a preneed seller would have to maintain. The first recordkeeping proposal was offered last July, but was never discussed. The recordkeeping proposal was subsequently included on the December agenda, but was only…
A Missouri Mid-Semester Cram: the March agenda
By Bill Stalter on
Posted in Compliance, Recordkeeping
The staff for the Missouri State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors posted the 779 page agenda for next week’s meetings. Doesn’t the state have a policy against the waste of natural resources? Granted the agenda includes minutes and regulation proposals from several prior meetings, but a Cliff’s Notes would be helpful to know what’s…
Missouri Preneed Seller Records: Trying to Get Everyone on a Similar Page
By Bill Stalter on
As reported in several prior posts, the preneed examination process in Missouri has been a work in progress for the past five years. Funeral homes in that state have been selling preneed for more than 30 years without much oversight or recordkeeping guidelines. When the law was re-written in 2009 in response to the NPS…
Missouri’s Second Round of Exams: The Committee’s Role
By Bill Stalter on
In September we posted about a regulation proposal that sought to define the role of a sub-committee of the Missouri State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors (Missouri’s Financial Examination Committee: What Role?). While the Board eventually gave its staff instructions to revise that proposal, the regulation has yet to resurface. Instead, the…
Missouri’s Second Round of Exams: Exit Interviews
By Bill Stalter on
In a prior post we alluded to Missouri preneed sellers’ complaints about the examination process, and that the follow up process to the on-site review has been unnecessarily burdensome. Subsequent to the examiner’s departure from the funeral home, the seller received an exception list of missing contracts or documents, which the seller can often quickly…
Missouri Second Round of Exams: 100% Reviews
By Bill Stalter on
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 Missouri Fund Manager: What was Grandfathered?
By Bill Stalter on
There seems to be some confusion in Missouri over the permissible contractual relationships among the preneed seller, the preneed trustee and the independent investment advisor. Prior to the collapse of NPS, and the subsequent amendment of Missouri’s preneed law, Chapter 436 allowed the preneed seller to incorporate provisions in its preneed trust agreement to instruct…
The Missouri Funeral Trust and its Catch-22
By Bill Stalter on
A status hearing is scheduled for September 28th in the lawsuit filed by the Missouri Funeral Trust against the State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors and Catholic Fraternal Life. The lawsuit is now 4 months removed from the request for a temporary restraining order that, among other relief sought, would stay the financial…