Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps he is taking with the Financial Conduct Authority to help ensure funeral fund providers have sufficient resources to meet their obligations.

In January 2021 the government legislated to bring all pre-paid funeral plan providers and intermediaries within the Financial Conduct Authority’s regulatory remit.

The FCA has extensive experience of both conduct and prudential regulation. As part of its regulation of the sector, the FCA have introduced requirements that ensure that funeral plan providers have sufficient funds to fulfil the funeral plan contracts they have entered into.

This includes rules that require funeral plan providers to:

• place sufficient funds to provide any agreed upon funeral in a trust or insurance arrangements;

• have systems and controls in place to ensure the adequacy of those trust and insurance arrangements and to ensure that pricing does not lead to insufficient sums being available to provide the agreed upon funeral; and

• consider the risk of inflation and volatility of trust assets when assessing the sums needed to provide for the funeral.