A pre-paid funeral plan enables you to arrange and pay for your funeral in advance, at today’s prices. The funeral need not be you own. You can contact a local funeral director or a plan provider.
You need to ask the plan provider whether it will be putting your money into either a trust fund with trustees or an insurance policy. Your plan provider will be able to explain this further. The aim of both methods is to safeguard your money until it is needed, ensuring that it is used to provide the funeral you have paid for.

If your plan provider does not put your money into either a trust or an insurance policy, then it must show that it is authorised by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Since January 2002 the law has said that plan providers must be authorised by the FSA unless they put their customers’ money into a trust fund or an insurance policy.

As at 31 March 2004, plan providers use trusts or insurance policies, so no plan provider is currently authorised by the FSA. But you should also check. You may also wish to check whether the plan provider is a member of the Funeral Planning Authority, the industry’s professional body, which sets standards for its registered providers.