Salt of the earth people. Trusting individuals, often struggling to make ends meet. Financially fleeced by businesses that have abused the fact that most elderly people want to do the right thing for their children, and ensure everything is hunky dory financially when that moment comes when they are no more.
Help me dear readers: how does a civilised society allow such financial rogues to make hay – and get away with it for so long?
I know the FCA is imperfect, expensive, bureaucratic, a world leader in procrastination and prone to staff going on strike, but it is better than the Wild West that exists beyond its regulatory reach.
Nowhere have the rogues roamed with more gay abandon than in the pre-paid funeral plans market. A funeral plan is a damn easy product to sell – a plan that will ensure the funeral of your choice is delivered when you shuffle off this mortal coil.
And at a price today, rather than in 10 or 15 years’ time, when funerals will cost a lot more than they do today (inflation, like elsewhere in the economy, is raging in the funerals market). It is a comfort purchase that many people in their late 60s and 70s make.
Although some good names operate in this space – the likes of Dignity and the trusty Co-op – there are also a whole bunch of charlatans out there whose only intention is to feather their own nests. They are worse than double-glazing salesmen.
Thankfully, the whale-like FCA – encouraged by some sterling work from the Competition and Markets Authority and the likes of consumer champion James Daley – have got wise to all this. The result is that come the end of July, funeral plans will fall within the FCA’s orbit. About time too.
Yet, as the FCA runs the rule over those providers that want to make the jump to a regulated world, it is uncovering some horror stories. None worse (for the moment anyway) than Safe Hands Plans, which has gone into administration, leaving some 47,000 customers wondering whether the plan they bought is actually a dud.
