funeral insurance new zealand - compare funeral cover plans   

Where do you even start to decide the best funeral insurance NZ for you?. There are some very well known funeral insurance brands out there like the Cigna Funeral Insurance or the AA Funeral Plan, who advertise extensively (and in the case of Cigna Funeral Cover even winning an unflattering Fair Go award). But while they are well known brands with big advertising budgets they are by no means the only funeral insurance options out there.

A number of the biggest mainstream life insurers either do not sell funeral insurance or if they do it is tucked away in a corner somewhere not easily found as it is not their core business. In fact, some the best funeral cover NZ options to consider alongside the likes of AA Funeral Plan and Cigna Funeral Plan are the funeral plans offered by niche insurers. These are smaller, often not so well-known insurers who specialise in certain covers as opposed to offering every thing to every body. 

The likes of Pinnacle Life, Legacy Life, Greenwich Life may fall in to this category. They each have funeral insurance policies that have a point of difference and may suit you better than the options only from the big players. The fact some insurers specialise in few products often means you get better products with unique policy benefits, more knowledgeable service and good premiums. 

You may also get more user friendly payment options like internet banking / automatic payments (that are usually frowned upon by the biggest insurers) to go with the unique benefits. When choosing funeral insurance we always recommend you have a look at at least 3 funeral plans before deciding on who to insure with. Funeral Insurance premiums and policy benefits definitely do differ from insurer to insurer and you can save save significant money by spending a little extra time at the start reviewing the options. 

We can help you with that too, our free service automatically provides comparative information for you as part of our standard service, We will provide product comparisons to help you. We have already done the running around so you do not have to. We will also reasearch, and advise you, of the best premiums from the extensive panel of NZ funeral insurance providers that we have access to.

Paul Woollams, Funeral Insurance NZ

We know that due to medical reasons it is sometimes not possible for the person needing to be insured to also be physically or mentally able to make an application themselves for funeral insurance. We often hear from family members wanting to arrange cover for those who may suffer from dementia (or similar) or some form of physical illness. 

In most instances a person to be insured must sign an application form or if it is done online they must sign/tick an online declaration. So, this prevents some people beng able to do this. If you have full power of attorney you can sign an application form on behalf of that person. You can also be the claim beneficiary and the person to make payments. The insurance company would need a copy of the Power of Attorney document but that is really the only inconvenience. We can guide you through that process.

If a person to be insured cannot understand and sign documents plus there is no Power of Attorney then we do have an option for funeral insurance if they are aged 30 to 70. This insurer allows you to sign the documents as a 'policy owner' so in fact it allows you to arrange cover with little or no difficulty. The person being insured need not even know cover has been arranged. This is also good in some instances we come across where a person simply is not interested whatsoever in having cover but ther spouse or family may see things a little differently. In these cases the only criteria is that you are close family, usually a spouse, son, daughter, parent or sibling. 

In the past we have had the odd instance of a family member signing up for standard funeral cover for another person, maybe their parents and they sign for them or do it online for them. This is not allowable and will invalidate any insurance as the declaration becomes invalid as it is not the insured person actually signing. It is often done with genuine intent but can cause major problems later. There is nothing wrong however with you are assisting / completing the online application for someone if they are present and next to you and they read the declaration area before the application is finalised. So, you can help then arrange funeral cover in this manner. 

Paul Woollams, Funeral Insurance NZ

If you are comparing leading funeral covers NZ you are likely to be drawn to big insurers like AA Life with their AA Funeral Plan, and the Cigna Funeral Insurance at Cigna Life. They are big spenders on TV ads so they quite possibly are names you will think of first when considering funeral insurance. You may also think of names like State Insurance and AMI Insurance even though they mainly sell house, contents and car insurance.  

They are options to consider but funeral insurance is actually quite a niche market so there are plenty of other funeral plans out there from insurers you maybe do not recognise so well, if at all. Some just sell funeral covers or a small range of life insurance type products that try to have a point of difference than the bigger name brands have. They are quite often very worthwhile checking out, expecially we find for funeral insurance. Likewise some of the biggest life insurers do not actively promote their funeral plans in the same way as they do for life insurance.   

Some of these niche type funeral plans that are worth at least reading up on are the Pinnacle Life Funeral Plan and covers from the likes of Partners Life, Greenwich Life and Legacy Life. They all have points of dfference so their funeral covers vary and ther premiums can also be quite different from one insurer to the next. Fidelity Life have two funeral type plans, one their funeral fund which you pay in to for 10 years and also their Golden Life product which sometimes suits those seeking funeral cover. 

Some examples of how the various funeral covers NZ differ include;

Cigna Funeral Cover - entry ages 50 to 85, cover $5000 to $30000, premiums payable until claim time regardless of age

Pinnacle Life Funeral Plan - entry ages 30 to 75, cover $7500 to $25000, pay premiums until age 85 then free thereafter

AA Funeral Plan - entry ages 50 to 79, cover $5000 to $30000, pay premiums to age 90 then free thereafter

Fidelity Life Funeral Plan - entry ages 17 to 64, Cover $12000 only, pay premiums for 10 years then free thereafter (NB pay in at a faster rate)

So, if you are looking at the Cigna Funeral Plan or AA Funeral Plan spare a thought for Pinnacle Life, Fidelty Life or one of the others we can detail. We can happily provide more information to you regarding those lesser known options so you can consider if they are more what you are looking for. We can email you comparative information and include a range of quotes if you click here http://www.funeralinsurancenz.co.nz/online-enquiry-form. 

Paul Woollams, Funeral Insurance NZ 

Some years back a Samoan family purchased a funeral plan for their mother. This ended up being a real financial benefit to them when she eventually passed on.

Before arranging this funeral cover for the mother, their father had just passed away. The cost to the wider family had been significant at that time due to the large numbers of family in New Zealand and from Samoa who wanted to attend. Some of the Samoan based extended family did not have the ready funds to pay for flights so this also fell on the rest of the family to help them. There was no funeral insurance for the father at the time.

Funeral Insurance was arranged for the mother at $25000. The family helped her with the paperwork and they arranged as a wider family group to contribute to the premium payments. So, with the help of a number of people to premiums were manageable. They took $25000 funeral cover as they knew from experience that would likely be the likely cost, including helping some overseas family to attend.

We understand their mother passed away last year. But, comforting was that the funeral insurance at least was there to help the family easily and quickly pay for all the funeral and related travel costs.

Insurance gets a bad rap a lot of the time, sometimes warranted, but at least here is an example of funeral insurance really doing the right thing at the right time.

Paul Woollams, Funeral Insurance NZ

We find that many people aged 60 plus have a real aversion to paying funeral insurance (or any bill for that matter) by direct debit. We are not quite sure why but maybe it is because that age group prefer to control the payment requirements more than leaving it in full control of the service provider.

Most funeral plans allow only payment by direct debit, and to be honest the insurers mainly do it for their own benefit as it saves them a lot of administrative time, but that is not user friendly to customers.

One of our preferred funeral cover NZ insurers will allow you to pay your funeral insurance by internet banking or automatic payment at no extra cost. They allow you control the payments as they understand that when on a fixed income it is not always easy to fit in to a pre-determined payment schedule of a certain day (often of the insurers choosing).

With this option you just have to make sure your payment is received by the funeral insurance provider before the end of the month it is due. So, it can fit around other bills or when an income or superannuation is received.

If payment by internet banking or automatic payment for your funeral insurance is important to you please enquire with us, fill in our online enquiry form and we will include details of this option in any information we email you.

Paul Woollams, Funeral Insurance NZ

It is important to understand that your funeral insurance claim payout is a cash amount that can be spent at the discretion of the beneficiary. You do not have to account the the insurance company how the money is spent. Once they have accepted the claim the money is deposited with the beneficiary and that is the end of their involvement.

We recently had a customer pass away and they had a cover amout of $25000 . Now, such a cover amount is not common amongst our customers. To be honest the majority select a sum insured of $7500 - $10000, just with an intention of covering the funeral costs. But, a higher level of cover is available for those who wish to have it. Some insurers provide cover as high as $30000. 

Just in case you were thinking about whether to take a higher level of cover here is an approximation of what this particular customer had their claim payout used for. The funeral was a reasonably large affair as theirs was a large extended family. So the funeral itself was about $12000, Some family reside overseas so it was always planned to use some of the claim money to help them with airfares. This totalled around $5000. The customer also had a small amount of debt of around $5000 from a current car loan.

So that was around $22,000. We understand the small balance was just used for family to plan some memorials. So, in this case you can see the value of funeral insurance that was taken for more than just the likely cost of the funeral. Had they just taken $7500 or $10000 there would have been a lot of cost extra to be covered by other means. 

Paul Woollams, Funeral Insurance NZ

While most people purchase more conventional funeral insurance that have monthly or fortnightly premiums paid long term (ie until death) there are some people who prefer to make premium payments over a shorter time frame. We have access to a funeral cover NZ with a sum insured of $12000 where you pay for just 10 years. After that time the cover continues free until you need it. 

The premiums for this type of funeral cover are more epensive than those funeral plans NZ that are pad until your passing. The reason is obviously that the insurer must collect the sufficient amount of premium in 10 years that they might otherwise be collecting over a longer time. So you typically pay at least double what you may pay for standard funeral insurance during that 10 year period. . 

This typically suits someone who might still have a reasonable income for an expected period and is then able to speed up the payment provison to get it out of the way before their income becomes more limited. Few of our clients have bought this cover for any other reason.

There is one potential downside and that is if you were to pass away within 10 years you would have potentially paid more than double the premiums than for standard funeral cover. This is a risk you have to access. Of course it works the other way too, if you live a very long life you safely have cover at no ongoing cost for many years. 

For this reason we tend to find that this type of funeral insurance is most suited to people aged 40-55 at the time of application. These are people potentially with income to an approximate retirement age. Ask us for more details of this type of insurance. 

Paul Woollams, Funeral Insurance NZ

Funeral Insurance is available for anyone aged 30 plus (as a rule). While it is true that funeral covers most commonly are purchased by the 60 plus age group there is no reason why cover is not suitable for the under 50's as well.

The main reasons someone under 50 would by funeral insurance are;

• Their health or body mass index (BMI) may not be standard, for example not life threatening but sufficient to make standard life insurance difficult to arrange. Funeral Insurance is guaranteed acceptance with no health questions at all so any previous or current health issues do not need to be disclosed now or anytime in the future. 
• Funeral Cover NZ premiums are fixed for life, so no pesky increases year by year as you get older. While some life insurance policies have fixed premiums you cannot have after age 80 which is when a claim is most likely to occur.
• Sometimes just a nominal amount of insurance cover to pay funeral expenses is all that is required if you have no debt or dependants. 

Firstly we have to say we are not funeral directors so we cannot provide advice on how much a funeral for your specific requrements will cost. Several sites show what they call average funeral costs but really that is next to useless for you as your funeral needs will be unique. So, to ascertain the likely cost of your funeral please talk only to a funeral director in your area. 

We have learnt that costs can range significanty and this is to be expected as some people will have extremely basic requirements while others will have many specific expectations which may push the cost up.

For this reason insurers offer a range of cover from $3000 to $30000. Now not all insurers offer the full range, some may offer offer a range in between, for example Pinnacle Life provide cover from $7500 to $25000. Cigna Funeral Insurance can range from $3000 to $30000 so dependant on your requirements some insurers will be options while others simply not as they do not offer the cover you want. 

Knowing the cost of your likely funeral is only one step in determining the level of cover. You also have to consder whether you require any extra to cover incidental costs such as clearing some small debt such as a loan or credit card. Some people also allow a ittle extra amount to assist family to travel, it is quite common now that families are scattered across NZ or maybe in the islands or Australia (or beyond).  

We can guide you, if you want a certain level of cover we can advise which funeral cover proviers can assist. When we quote for you we typically provide you with a range of cover amount levels. We do this because while you may prefer a certain level of cover it may be outside your budget, so we include a range to allow you options in order to suit you financally. Some customers do ending up taking a lower level of cover than ideal to meet budget considerations and we totally accept that is better than more cover at all.  

Paul Woollams, Funeral Insurance NZ

For Funeral Insurance in New Zealand there are absolutely no restrictions on how the claim money can be spent. Claims are paid out as a cash lump sum to the person who was nominated as the beneficiary of the funeral cover when the policy was commenced.

Some overseas style funeral insurance policies are tied to specific costs, so you have to present invoices to the funeral plan provider for reimbursement for the coffin, service, flowers etc. But there is no such requirement if you have a standard Funeral cover NZ. The cash can be used for whatever purpose, sometimes this even extends to helping family members if they have to fly in from overseas, clearing some small debt like credit cards or a loan.  

As the money is paid to the nominated beneficiary to use it is important to choose this person carefully. Usually the beneficiary is a spouse, adult son or daughter or a trusted friend. Remember too that you can alter this person at any time if your circumstances change. Make sure you always give a copy of the funeral insurance NZ document to your trusted person so that when the time comes they know who the insurer is and have all the contact details, policy numbers etc. 

We also suggest a one off chat occurs about what you want to happen at the time of your funeral. It is not a fun subject I know but better to sign off any final wishes in case you do not get an opportunity to do so later. Even simple things like cremation or burial, what sort of service you want are worth discussing just so there is no confusion later, maybe even after you are gone.

Paul Woollams, Funeral Insurance NZ