Funeral cover, also known as funeral insurance, can provide your family with the financial support that they need during a traumatic time. In South Africa, funeral cover is a very popular insurance option. But if you're shopping for funeral insurance, how do you know which of the many companies available you should choose? That's why we're here. We've compiled all the information that you need to evaluate funeral insurance companies, so that you can make the best decision.
How Did We Evaluate the Funeral Cover insurance Companies
Using information from the websites of the companies themselves, as well as consumer feedback from the review website Hellopeter.com, we've evaluated ten major funeral insurance policies from leading South African insurance companies:
We took the information collected, and divided it into three sections: (1) the kinds of services the company offers, (2) the cost of the funeral policy and the coverage sum it offers, and (3) how consumers rated the companies for their services. Then, we assigned points to the top three companies in each of the above sections: 3 points for 1st place, 2 points for 2nd place, and 1 point for 3rd place, meaning that at the end we would be able to see the top three ranking companies. Although this ranking system is not scientific, based on the information collected, it will help you make an more informed decision when chosing your funeral policy provider. So, let's get to work.
Funeral Cover Services by Company
The first part of our research was to find out what you could expect from a funeral insurance policy from each of these companies. We looked at five different areas:
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Payout Time: how long you can expect to wait after filing a claim to get your money?;
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Family Plans: does the company allow you to cover other family members in the same funeral insurance plan?;
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Memorial Benefit: does the company offer the option to have an additional payout at a later date to cover the costs of unveiling a memorial or tombstone?;
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Double Accident Payout: does the company offer the option to have double the coverage amount paid out if death is due to accident?;
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Other Benefits: what other benefits can you expect to see? Many companies offer additional options such as money for groceries, transport, or even education to help families in times of trauma, and some also offer mobile phone airtime during a time when many phone calls are likely to be made.
Be aware that all the benefits may not apply to all policies with a company, and that some may be optional extras, whilst others will mean paying higher monthly premiums. We simply looked at all the options, so there's no guarantee that the actual plan you choose will definitely contain all the below features.
Services Offered by Funeral Insurance Companies
* n/a= information not available on company website
As you can see, there are differing levels of service amongst funeral insurance companies. Both Clientele Life and Discovery promise shorter pay out times, but Nedbank Insurance and Assupol offer plenty of extra services. In this case, we're awarding Discovery 3 points for having options in four measurable categories, Clientele 2 points for having options in three measurable categories, and Hollard and Nedbank tie at 3rd and get 1 point each.
However, all this comes down to what you're looking for in a funeral insurance policy, since not all customers will need all these features. However, something that we're all interested in is money…so, let’s move to the next aspect.
Cost and Coverage Amounts for Funeral Cover
There are two financial factors involved when choosing funeral insurance. The first of these is your monthly premium: how much will you have to pay each month. This depends on many things: your age and state of health (smokers would pay more), for example, as well as the amount of coverage you choose. Coverage is your second financial concern: how much money will be paid out after death?
Whilst all insurance company websites tell us the maximum coverage amount available (you may choose a lower amount if you wish to get lower premiums), not all companies tell us their minimum monthly premiums. This is simply because premiums vary by personal circumstances. However, wherever possible we've given you the minimum amount you can expect to pay per month for each company.
Coverage Amounts and Minimum Premium Payments
* n/a= whilst we did contact Momentum for information, they did not respond with their lowest monthly premium rates.
Again, you can see that prices vary. Whilst Nedbank has the lowest possible monthly premium (keeping in mind that not all companies quoted their absolute minimum premium prices), Old Mutual and Momentum both offered the highest maximum coverage for funeral insurance. So, we're awarding Old Mutual 3 points for high coverage amounts at low prices, Nedbank come in second with 2 points for low premiums, and Absa comes in third with 1 point.
Again, which you choose will depend on your needs, but do remember that higher coverage will generally mean higher premiums.
How Consumers Rate Funeral Insurance Companies
Now, let's move on to how consumers rate their experience with these funeral insurance companies. In order to get this information, we've used reviews from Hellopeter, the website that lets customers rate service providers. It is important to note here that these reviews are for ALL the services that each company provides, not just for funeral insurance services. Nevertheless, in most cases it's fair to assume that the user experience wouldn't be too different in different service areas. Problems with call centres, for example, are likely to effect funeral insurance customers as well as banking or life insurance customers. So let's take a look at those numbers:
Consumer Ratings of Funeral Insurance Companies
There are two interesting things here. The first is, in general, how unhappy customers seem to be with insurance companies. But you do need to keep a couple of things in mind here. Firstly, people are naturally more likely to complain than to compliment. Secondly, for most people the only time they contact their insurance company is to buy a policy, to claim on a policy, or if there's a problem. This also makes it much more likely that people are going to complain about their insurance experience (most of us don't contact our insurance companies just to tell them that they're doing a great job, it's generally because some kind of billing mistake has occurred).
That being said, the second interesting thing here is just how high Discovery Insure is rated compared to other companies. With a 70% positive rating, Discovery has almost three times as many happy customers as the next most highly rated funeral insurance company, something that potential customers are going to find encouraging. So, Discovery here get 3 points, Metropolitan receive 2, and Momentum get 1 point.
Breaking Down Customer Complaints
Just what are all those unhappy customers unhappy about? We can break down complaints into six main areas using data available on Hellopeter:
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Bad Attitude: this is generally a customer service complaint about unhelpful or unfriendly service;
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Billing/Accounts: for complaints about general financial matters;
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Breach of Contract: for complaints about the company not doing what it promised to do;
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Call Centre: for complaints about dealing with telephone customer service operators;
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Feedback/Response: generally these are complaints about representatives taking a long time to respond to questions or to fix problems;
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Other: complaints about anything else.
Just how do the complaints for each of our funeral insurance companies break down? Take a look:
Nature of Complaints About Companies
And if you prefer to see the same information presented in a more visual way, here's a chart with the same break down:
Nature of Complaints About Companies Take Two
What should you make of this information? Well, as a potential funeral insurance customer there are probably two main things that you're interested in. One of these is billing and accounts, since you'll be paying monthly premiums and want everything to go smoothly. In this case, Metropolitan and Momentum Insurance both come out on top, getting the least percentage of complaints about billing and accounts with only 11%.
The second area that you might be interested in is feedback and response times, since if you need to make a claim, or you have a problem, you will want your funeral insurance company to get back to you quickly. In this case, Clientele and again Momentum Insurance have the lowest percentage of complaints in this area, both getting 12%.
As a whole we took the company with the lowest percentage in each category and awarded 3 points, the second lowest getting 2 etc. Then we added up all the points to award first, second and third place. Momentum came out top, getting 3 points (having the lowest percentage of complaints in four categories!), Clientele and Nedbank were joint second, getting 2 points each, and Discovery was third, getting 1 point.
The Best Funeral Insurance company: The results! (drums please)
So, we've added up all the points we assigned, and we've got the three top rated funeral insurance companies for you! Coming in at the top of the list is Discovery, who got 7 points using our system, maybe not a big surprise considering how highly consumers rated the company. At number two we've got Nedbank, who got a respectable 5 points. And at number three there's a tie between Clientele and Momentum, both of whom got 4 points.
Shopping for funeral insurance isn't easy, but it is an important step and we hope that we've given you some helpful information to work with. Of course, it's important to remember that everyone's needs differ, and premiums can vary a lot based on these needs. That's why we recommend a bit of comparison shopping and that you get at least 2 quotes from different companies before committing to a policy. But now you're equipped to evaluate funeral policies, making your comparison shopping faster and easier than ever!
* Disclaimer: We do not represent any of the companies, products and/or services reviewed, published or advertised on this website. Nor are we financial, health or insurance professionals or services provider. If you request a quote or purchase a product/service, it will not necessarily be given by the company reviewed on any specific page. Any decisions you make based on the information presented is at your own discretion and we advise that before doing so, you consult with the relevant professional.
Fair discloser: this website contains paid advertisements from various insurance companies, but we do not knowingly promote any specific company, nor do we control which advertisments appear on the website.
Main subject: funeral cover
