Pre-Paid Funeral Plans
A prepaid funeral plan can help ease the emotional worry and responsibility that unexpected funeral arrangements can bring by fixing some costs now (to avoid the risk of these increasing in the future), allowing you to record your personal wishes and giving you the peace of mind that the arrangements are taken care of.
Peace of mind for your loved ones with protected prices
Although the cost of funerals dropped in 2021 according to the Sun Life cost of dying report* the trend over the last decade has been rising funeral costs. By taking out an Open funeral plan you can secure the funeral directors costs at today’s prices.
Regulated by the FCA
A prepaid funeral plan is a sensible way of recording your funeral wishes and making a payment at todays price to make either a complete or substantial contribution to your funeral expenses at the time of need hopefully years in the future. Your funeral director expenses are guaranteed to be covered but disbursements do carry a risk that there could be a shortfall between the redemption value and at need value of those costs at the time of need.
Since July 2022 Customers of authorised providers will now have access to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), so their money is protected if their provider fails. Consumers can also make a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). Please refer to fca.org.uk
Frequently asked questions
Our open plans are regulated and value tested which means you get fairly priced funeral plans through our partner, Open Prepaid Funeral Plans. Our pricing is open and transparent and we do not add additional fees onto the Open Prepaid Funeral Plan pricing structure. We do not receive any introductory fees and you pay Open Prepaid Funeral Plan directly.
Speak to us and we can arrange an appointment on your behalf. You deal with Open prepaid Funeral Plan directly but we are then your nominated funeral director in the event of your passing.
There are a number of ways:
- You can pay securely online through this website
- You can pay by card, cheque or bank transfer
- You can pay over a number of months, interest free over 12 months or up to 24 months (with charges that add to your plan value not to our bottom line) by direct debit. A charge is made for instalment payments between 12 and 24 months which is equivalent to an APR of 4.9% however all of these additional charges are applied to the value of your plan and is not a way for us to make profit.
If you die of natural causes before the plan is fully paid then the sum you have paid to that point is refunded to your family/estate. If you die and it is officially defined as accidental then the plan you have taken out will be paid out in full.
Disbursements are also referred to as third party costs. They are elements of a funeral that carry costs that are not controlled by the funeral director or by us, things such as cremation or burial costs, doctors fees for cremation, church fees, minister or celebrant fees etc. (a more extensive list is available in our Terms and Conditions (link). These elements vary depending on the type of funeral chosen but are part of every funeral to some extent. We do recommend including the contribution to disbursements in your funeral plan so as to contribute at the time of need but you don’t have to, you could leave it to your family to sort out in the future. If you have any questions please speak to one of our professional advisers.
The Open Plan is designed to be as personal to you as you wish; choose one of our standard prepaid funeral plans and personalise with your own preferences including readings, songs, hymns, flowers, donations to charity and more. We can also help you to create a completely unique plan to you.