Funeral plans
If you have a funeral plan and your provider has gone out of business on or after 29 July 2022, you may be FSCS protected. This includes funeral plans bought before this date.
Your funeral plan provider must be regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) – you can check on the Financial Services Register.
Funeral plans
For all types of funeral plan claims, you are protected up to £85,000 per eligible person, per firm.
If you choose to receive compensation, FSCS will calculate the amount by reference to what it would cost to buy the same plan on today’s market.
How we protect customers
Funeral plan provider claims
If your funeral plan provider goes out of business, it should have arrangements in place to ensure that a new regulated provider can carry out your funeral plan. Alternatively, it may provide you with compensation.
If these arrangements aren’t place, FSCS will protect plan holders of authorised funeral plan providers that have failed.
We will work with the failed firm, the FCA and the insolvency practitioner (IP) to ensure that we have the information we need. In most circumstances you won’t need to make a claim.
Replacement funeral plan
Where possible, we will seek to give you the option of entering into a new contract with a replacement regulated funeral plan provider. It would be a like-for-like replacement plan with the same terms as your original plan. Where that’s not possible, it would have terms as similar as possible to the original.
Before we complete this process, we’ll ask you if you want to receive replacement cover. If you don’t, you can choose to receive compensation for your plan instead.
Compensation
If you would rather receive compensation, FSCS will calculate the amount by reference to what it would cost to buy the same plan on today’s market.
If we aren’t able to arrange a replacement funeral plan, we will pay you compensation on the same basis.
Other types of funeral plan claim
From 29 July 2022, you may also be able to claim compensation for certain activities carried out by a funeral plan provider or their intermediaries (e.g funeral directors and will writers). Examples include advice to take out a funeral plan, or the way a funeral plan was set up.
The activity must have occurred on or after 29 July 2022.
If a funeral plan holder passes away and their funeral plan provider fails
If a plan holder were to pass away after their funeral plan provider fails, but before:
- FSCS has yet to secure a new funeral plan contract with a new provider or pay compensation, and
- the IP of the provider is not able to secure the provision of a funeral,
then FSCS may be able to help with the provision of a funeral.
If you are a customer’s nominated representative or next of kin and this has happened, please contact the named funeral director in the original funeral plan, who will advise you on next steps. This will be the named firm of undertakers under the terms of the funeral plan, or in the absence of this information, the firm of undertakers you have selected.
Once you have contacted the funeral director, please notify us of your situation. You can contact us by phone, post or live chat – our customer service team is on hand to help.
Compensation limits
For all types of funeral plan claims, you are protected up to £85,000 per eligible person, per firm.
If you choose to receive compensation, FSCS will calculate the amount by reference to what it would cost to buy the same plan on today’s market.