Despite many people not looking forward to dying, funeral insurers are getting rich pickings from people investing in death and registered a 56 percent growth in net profit for the year ended March 2016.
The funeral insurance sector registered a US$2.54 million profit with its gross written premium growing by 9.8 percent to US$40 million dollars during the same period, commissioner of the Insurance and Pensions Commission Tendai Karonga has said.
The sector has nine funeral insurers, 11 life insurers and many small funeral service providers.
In the past, many people were not keen on taking funeral insurance policies because they did not want to have anything to do with issues relating to their own deaths, in the same way many are still refusing to write wills.
However, they have since realized that funeral insurance policies cushion them and their families from hardships during times of bereavement.
Funeral insurers offer different packages, but the most basic ones include provision of a coffin, grocery money, funeral parlour services, tents, chairs and a bus to transport mourners to and from the burial site.
Even big companies are encouraging their employees to take such policies, with some large entities running their own benevolent funds.
Karonga, who was addressing a funeral insurance conference in Bulawayo on Monday, said the funeral insurance industry continued to grow despite the economic challenges facing the country.
“This growth is owing to the fact that giving our beloved ones a decent send-off has become as ‘basic necessity’,” Karonga said.
Many Zimbabweans in the diaspora are also taking funeral policies after realizing that repatriation of bodies back home can be costly and time consuming especially when a death occurs when they do not have any money on them.
In some cases, some bodies from countries as near as South Africa and Botswana have taken long to be repatriated as hard-pressed relatives raise funds from well-wishers to bring them home.
Private photographer William Nyamuchengwa said taking funeral insurance policies was advisable because bereaved families found solace in the fact that their loved ones received decent burials.
“I hope the economy will not affect the smooth provision of service and result in people losing value on their premiums like what happened in 2008 when the Zimbabwe dollar lost value,” he said.
Karonga said IPEC was pushing for the adoption of new risk management and corporate governance guidelines by the industry to improve management of companies.
He also urged the industry to come up with new products to go hand in hand with economic trends where most companies were downsizing and closing.
But just like any other insurance business, funeral insurers can also fall victim to fraudsters.
Karonga therefore urged the industry to come up with mechanisms such as whistle blower facilities to address cases of insurance fraud which were a threat to the sector.
“Companies that have whistle-blower facilities have managed to curb fraudulent claims from either employees or external stakeholders,” he said.
