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.

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Funeral plans

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.

Check if you can claim

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:

  1. FSCS has yet to secure a new funeral plan contract with a new provider or pay compensation, and
  2. 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.

Frequently asked questions

Pre-paid funeral plans are products that allow you to pre-arrange and pre-pay for your funeral with a provider, generally for a fixed cost.

They can be sold by a third-party intermediary (e.g funeral directors and will writers), or directly by a funeral plan provider. Funeral plans can be paid for by a one off premium or by instalments.

In most circumstances you won’t need to make a claim. However, if your claim is about certain activities carried out by a funeral plan provider or their intermediaries (e.g., funeral directors and will writers), such as advice to take out a funeral plan or the way a funeral plan was set up – you will need to check online if you can claim. The activity must have occurred on or after 29 July 2022.

You can search our list of failed firms.

All you need to do is enter the name of the firm or its firm reference number (FRN), which is a unique number allocated to all firms regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A firm’s FRN can be found on the FCA’s Financial Services Register

If the firm has failed, we will have a page providing guidance on what to do next. You can also subscribe for email updates about this firm at the bottom of the page

FSCS aims to investigate claims as quickly as possible. Each claim is unique and can be complex, so we can’t predict exactly how long it will be before we can give you a decision.

On our website we outline how long it’s currently taking to complete eight out of 10 claims for each type of product that we protect.

We will update this page with an average for funeral plan claims as and when we begin to process them. We are aware of the unique time sensitivities that will play into funeral plan claims, so we will work as quickly as possible to resolve any that arise. Our claims processes have been developed with these time sensitivities in mind and this has informed how we will be handling these claims.

Please note that the FCA is not anticipating any funeral plan firm failures in the 2022/23 financial year.

If you have a complaint against a funeral plan provider or intermediary that is currently trading, you may be able to refer it to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).

You will first need to have made a complaint to the provider or intermediary you are unhappy about.

For more information, visit the FOS's pre-paid funeral complaints page.

Funeral plan firms that are not on the Financial Services Register must not sell or carry out funeral plans in the UK. The firms will have either transferred their plans to an authorised provider or begun to wind down their business.

If you have a plan with one of these firms, they should contact you to let you know what’s happening. If you haven’t heard from your provider or their administrator, get in touch with them as soon as possible.

You can find a list of firms that must not carry out or sell funeral plans and more information about them on the FCA website.

You can find more information about funeral plans and over 50s plans via the MoneyHelper website.

The FCA website also has information for consumers on its funeral plans page.