5 Steps Banks Can Guide Clients Through for Funeral Preparation

There’s no denying that funeral preparation can be a difficult process both logistically and emotionally. As unfair as it might seem, funerals aren’t free, and an expensive bill at a very painful time can make a close personal loss that much harder for your clients. 

Many people might prefer to avoid the issue, but funeral preparation is a service that proactive banks can offer their families that delivers peace of mind and financial security while encouraging larger wealth-building conversations. By opening the door to multigenerational engagement for life planning and business succession services, banks can promote financial literacy and long-term banking habits that build non-interest income and deposit growth. 

The Value of Funeral Planning Services

For better or worse, planning a funeral is not something most people have a lot of experience with. These emotionally charged moments can also involve thousands of dollars in expenses that lead to conflict and confusion—especially when family members are grieving or disagree about the deceased person’s wishes. 

Nobody benefits from surprises and chaos at these moments, and by engaging in advance to help with life planning and financing solutions, banks help their customers:

• Reduce stress. Planning a large event can be difficult at any time, but it’s even harder on people who are actively grieving. By offering comprehensive life planning services, banks make sure everyone is on the same page and funds are allotted far in advance. 
• Stop conflict in its tracks. In many cases, funeral planning tension results from a lack of clear intentions. This can lead to lawsuits and other expenses that impact everyone’s financial health. 
• Ensure their final wishes are fulfilled. Most people have at least a few funeral-related preferences. Creating a funeral plan is a great way to ensure these desires will be respected.
• Keep funeral costs under control. Funeral planning is often done in a rush, making it hard for people to focus on saving money on these events. Naturally, that won’t be as much of an issue when people make major funeral-related decisions ahead of time.

When your financial institution is ready to help out with the planning process, you can build stronger relationships with your customers and explore mutual financial benefits as a direct result. Here are the important steps you’ll want to cover in the process and how digital platforms and services can support them. 

Step #1: Creating a Last Will (And More)

Before taking time to think about their funerals, your customers need to make sure they’ve covered other basic life-planning steps. Early on in this process, people should define their:

• Last will
• Living will
• Durable power of attorney
• Disposition
• Obituary

Despite the importance of last wills and related documents, not everyone takes the time to put these plans together. In fact, a mere 32% of US residents had created a last will as of 2024. It’s unfortunate, because these documents ensure that their family gets the most out of the wealth they pass along. Making things worse, many people who would like life planning guidance have trouble finding a financial institution that’s prepared to assist with even basic activities like creating a legally binding will. 

With that in mind, adding will preparation to your bank’s service lineup could be a golden opportunity. An innovative partner offering platform-based life planning and succession services can be the perfect solution that differentiates your bank from the competition and opens the door to valuable connections with new generations of customers. 

Step #2: Picking the Right Type of Ceremony

Since funerals are inherently personal, people thinking about life planning need to consider what they want this event to look like. Depending on their personalities, cultures, and other factors, your customers may want their funerals to include a:

• Celebration of life
• Religious service
• Viewing
• Wake
• Visitation
• Graveside service
• Dinner party
• Memorial
• Scattering of ashes

If a client is wondering which of these options is the best fit for them, they may ask you questions about this as part of their life planning efforts. You’ll need to be prepared to field these questions as part of the process, and offering online services that let them engage in these activities at their own pace can make it much easier to bring the picture into focus. 

Step #3: Deciding What Should Happen During the Funeral

Once a person has decided what type of funeral they want, it’s time for them to think about the details associated with the event. At this point, they may want to talk to you about their funeral’s:

• Venue
• Pallbearers
• Attendees
• Decorations
• Music
• Video
• Speakers
• Refreshments
• Decorations

In addition to the factors listed above, a customer may be interested in sharing last messages with their loved ones during their funeral. Messages like these are often included in an “ethical will”—a document people can use to share their thoughts on the past, present, and future after their deaths. 

Though ethical wills aren’t legally binding, these are still among the many documents your customers won’t want to lose track of. When your bank partners with the right platform developer, you can store documents like these for your clients in a secure digital vault. By doing so, you’ll give your customers another reason to trust your financial institution and make it easy for their family to participate in the process.

Step #4: Making Crucial Bodily Decisions

Once they have both the broad strokes and details of their funerals in place, your clients should shift gears and decide what they want to happen to their bodies after death. Though your customers may already know whether they’d prefer to be buried or cremated, they’ll still have some decisions to make once they’ve selected one of these basic options. 

Depending on their choices, these may carry greater or lesser expenses. You’ll want to talk through all the options, including:

• Home burial
• Full embalming casket burial (either in-ground or above-ground)
• Shroud burial
• Pine box burial
• Urn
• Donation to science
• Memorials 

Along with that, your clients should take time to make other bodily decisions, such as whether or not they want to have an open-casket viewing. Though this can be an especially emotional part of the funeral planning process, helping your customers through it will give them an unshakable emotional connection to your bank.

Step #5: Funding the Funeral

One of the most direct ways your bank can help people with funeral planning is by helping people figure out how they’ll pay for this event. The fact of the matter is that funerals aren’t cheap—as of 2024, the median cost for a funeral with a viewing and burial was $8,300.

Though a customer’s funeral could be more or less expensive than that, these events typically fall into the $6,000-$12,000 range. You can make it easier for people to finance their funerals by helping them:

Create a Funeral Funding Account

If one of your customers has a payable-on-death bank account, they can set aside funds for their funeral without worrying about how their loved ones will access this money after they pass. And when this bank account is active at your financial institution, you’ll be able to benefit from increased customer engagement.

Buy Funeral Insurance

Your clients can purchase a funeral insurance policy as part of a life insurance package. When they do, they’ll get help paying for funeral arrangements, burial/cremation expenses, and other funeral-related costs.

Estate Planning

Finally, your customers may want to work with you to set aside portions of their estate that can be liquidated after their deaths. This will give these people’s loved ones access to another source of funeral funding.

Picking a Digital Partner for Life Planning Services

As you can see, helping customers prepare for their funerals can come with a number of benefits for financial institutions. But even if your bank isn’t ready to assist customers with will preparation, document storage, and other vital steps in the funeral planning process, there’s no need to worry. By partnering with The Postage, you’ll be able to start providing these services as soon as possible.

The Postage offers a comprehensive life planning platform designed to help financial institutions introduce services like will creation, memory/message sharing, and digital document storage. Along with the perks that come with offering these services to your existing customers, you’ll be able to attract new clients looking for help with funeral planning and talk to these people about your bank’s other services.

Thanks to these advantages and others, it should come as no surprise to hear that The Postage can help your bank enjoy heightened activity in deposit and non-interest accounts—not to mention an average ROI increase of 300%+ in just a few months. If you’d like to be there for your clients while they plan their funerals, make the first move by scheduling a demo of our platform today!