Wall Street Journal points out life insurers are entering the funeral biz.
According to the Wall Street Journal several Life insurance Companies are now offering funeral industry related services. This was made apparent Monday when immediately after receiving a federal bailout the Hartford Insurance Company announced it was teaming up with EVEREST -a funeral concierge and planning service.
Snippet: from the May 19th Wall Street Journal Article:“Legal help for probate and professional help for funeral planning are among the services being bundled into group-coverage packages by a growing number of companies. Hartford Financial Services Group Inc.; Prudential Financial Inc.; ING Employee Benefits, a subsidiary of ING Groep NV; and MetLife Inc. are among those joining the trend.”
There is a new emerging funeral industry as the traditional funeral business is buckling under economic pressures and life insurance companies are taking a role in funerals is just a small part of this. Many time times the life insurance company refers to this as end of life services.
Funeral Industry| Funeral Blog by Your Funeral Guy.
Sources:
Details are at the Wall Street Journal online. The life insurance companies always have been closely associated with the funeral industry in that cashing in a life insurance policy is how many funerals are paid for. More information on the Hartford-Everest team up can be found here.
Wall Street Journal pic from flickr under the creative commons license from
