Funeral Insurance

Funeral Insurance

Funeral  insurance with Insurance Cover Spain

The discussion and planning of your own funeral can be morbid, but it is equally important. While no one wishes to have the discussion of their death with friends and loved ones, we have to remember that forward thinking and communication is key to ensuring that you are not leaving behind any kind of financial and organisational stress for your friends and family, aside from the naturally emotional distress.

Funeral Insurance is essentially nothing more than a guarantee that the costs and efforts relating to your funeral are taken care of, in the event of your demise. While we may not personally feel that a funeral is something to worry about, perhaps due to our age or simply because we haven’t ever given it much thought, you have the opportunity to plan ahead and prepare in advance, so that, when the time comes, you are selflessly taking work off the shoulders of your friends and family, allowing them to focus on other affairs they may need to deal with, but most importantly, their last goodbyes and mourning.

For these reasons, we offer incomparable funeral insurance cover in Spain, with a special focus given to expats relating to repatriation, as this is often missing in other policies and plans. Not only that, but we also have a wide selection of additional features to help your friends and family through this difficult time. We offer psychological assistance to those who need it, remote health services, legal assistance as well as services relating to the removal of digital footprints and inheritance management options, to name a few.

We appreciate that this is a sensitive topic to discuss with a third-party. That’s why our team are very focused on ensuring that we can assist you both during the set-up process as well as during a claim, with discretion, attentiveness, and uncomplicatedness in mind.

Our services are also available in your language, meaning we have staff and claims teams on-hand to ensure that language barriers are not an additional cause of grief and distress, because we understand that you have far more important things to focus on in these times.

What are the benefits of having funeral insurance? 

The primary benefit of having funeral insurance in Spain is effectively written on the tin. By having this kind of cover, as an expat, you are ensuring that the admin and costs of your funeral are prearranged and financially secured.

Many do not know about the costs involved around funerals and cremations in Spain and the exorbitant costs that come with the repatriation process for expats until they are faced with it. And while no one plans to die, these costs can creep up on relatives and potentially leave them in a difficult financial situation, as they naturally will want to give you the send-of that you deserve, regardless of the cost.

According to some statistics, the average funeral costs somewhere between €3500 and €4500 depending on your service and the location thereof. And this is just for Spain. When taking repatriation into account for expats, that figure can rise considerably, by another approximately €4400 to €6000 on average. This in part is due to the complicated process and admin revolving around the transport of human remains, in most cases by air.

With those figures in mind, you need to consider two things; the first being that these costs don’t necessarily fall to you, and money or assets you leave behind will likely be tied up in legal and administrative processes for some time after your death. Your friends and family may need to pay these costs in advance, something that in today’s climate, may not be an option, or certainly not an easy option, for most.

Inheritance is another subject that we all eventually need to consider preparing for. Understandably however, the cost of legal services to have these things prepared and also actioned in the event of necessity, can also be a costly affair for you. This is why we offer the option to have one of our legal experts help you through the process of preparing for the inheritance succession process, as well as your family to ensure the process is carried out for you when the time comes.

With all these figures now running through your mind, you may be wondering if an insurance policy such as ours would be a more cost effective and manageable option. The answer to that question, is yes. Our policies come in various varieties and plans to suit your needs and financing preferences. Another factor to consider is that by planning ahead, the costs do not need to be detrimental to you either, as our plans and payment options can also be suited to you. Not to mention the special offers and discounts that we frequently have for our expats.

What is repatriation?

Repatriation is defined as the process of returning the human remains of individuals who have passed away abroad to their home country. It seems like a minor detail, but you’ll be surprised to know that not many funeral plans and insurances offer this service, or at least, not without specifically asking for it. As we have discussed above, the costs of repatriation, due to the complicated nature of the cargo and the paperwork involved, is almost always exorbitant. So while you believe you have taken care of the costs of your funeral, service and transport, there could be a nasty surprise waiting for your friends  and family, when it comes time to get you home.

For many expats living abroad, it is important that, in the event of their demise, they are put to rest in their home country. This can be for religious reasons and for personal reasons, such as wishing to be laid to rest with other family members, friends, or simply because they wish to be returned to their home, which are all perfectly reasonable motives.

You may have set up a ‘funeral plan’ with companies in the UK or UK registered companies when these became popular in recent years. We’ve all seen little stalls at some stage as the funeral industry took an interesting turn into effectively a retail environment. While these plans are perfectly legitimate and legal, a lot of them do  not take repatriation or living abroad into account. So, if you already have one of these popular plans in place, it may be a good idea to double check the conditions and ensure that the plan form a while ago you have still works for you and are also valid for use, if you live abroad, taking repatriation into account, should that be important to you.

What are my options?

We have several funeral insurance options available for you varying depending on your preferences in terms of repatriation as well as payment frequencies and what additional features you may wish your cover to have. Let’s go over some of them here:

Comprehensive Annual Death/ funeral Insurance

Comprehensive Annual Death/ funeral Insurance

This is the go-to policy for most individuals who wish to insure the cost of their death, funeral, or cremation, including transport, repatriations, services, and all of the above-mentioned additional features optionally.

Payment options can be chosen to b annual, half-yearly, quarterly, or even monthly, should you prefer. The benefit of starting such a policy early is that the longer you have the policy for, the higher the total coverages will be, as these increment annually.

These kinds of policies are ideal for individuals who are younger as the annual costs are always lower, the younger you are. While it may be an odd thought to consider funeral insurance at a younger age, financially, it makes a lot of sense, as you will benefit from lower prices and higher accumulations in the long run.

One-of payment death/ funeral insurance

One-of payment death/ funeral insurance

This is a fantastic option for those over the age of 70 who want to pay for their entire policy in one payment, rather than subscribing to our annual policies with their gradually incrementing pay-out limits.

This type of policy includes everything that the other options include, so you are not losing out on any of the features of the annual policies. Quite the contrary, it also comes with some additional extras included in the policy, that you don’t find in other options. One of the best of these extras is that, contrary to other policies, in the event that your total funeral costs do not reach your total insured amount, the unused amount will be paid out to your relatives.

Another added benefit from choosing such a policy, is that you only pay once, and then you do not need to worry about it again, nor do you have to worry about renewals and so forth. In theory, you can have this policy in place within a day without much hassle or paperwork, naturally we’re here to take you through the process and ensure everything goes through smoothly for you.

Should I wait until I am older to get cover?

We touched on this subject a little earlier in this article, you can certainly wait, if something like the one-off payment policy is something you are looking for, as you must be at last 70 years of age to be able to take advantage of it. That being said, for any of our other policies, the idea is that the younger you are, the least costly your policy will be.

With our annual policies for example, for each year you have the policy, the funeral cost limits increase. That doesn’t mean to say that the policy has low limits to begin with, as an example you may start your firs year with a funeral cost limit of approximately €13,000 but by year 5 the amount can raise to approximately €16,000.

We completely understand that someone in their late 20’s might feel that a funeral insurance policy would be wasted on them at such a young age, but the reality is that, at that age, your annual premiums are extremely low, yet you are building up the annual cost limits regardless. What his all means in short, is that overall, when it comes to annual funeral insurances, the younger you are, the least expensive it is and the more you get out of it.

We have exclusive discounts for our expats, that can range from 10% to 80% off annual policies, so when you consider taking out a policy with us, we’ll always apply the best discount we can for you, making your perhaps already very reasonable annual policy even less expensive.

Of course, if none of the above sways you, you are more than welcome to wait and take out cover when you are slightly older. We are happy to cater to your choices and needs and we will always ensure that you get a policy that is right for you, with conditions and terms that you understand.