New Actuarial Standard on Funeral Plans is Published

News types: Guidance, Publications

Published: 10 February 2011

The FRC’s Board for Actuarial Standards (BAS) has today published its standard for actuarial work concerning Funeral Plan Trusts, building on the foundation laid by its standards on Reporting, Data and Modelling.
Over 600,000 people in the UK own a funeral plan. The purpose of funeral plans is to provide peace of mind to plan holders that their wishes for their funeral will be met. This purpose is achieved by either keeping plan holders’ money secure until needed in funeral plan trusts or buying life assurance policies.

In the absence of a statutory prudential regulator of funeral plan trusts, the trustees’ governance responsibility is vital in ensuring plan holders requirements are met. Actuaries play an important role in providing high quality information to trustees about the assets and liabilities of the funeral plan trusts they govern. This actuarial information enables trustees to exercise their governance responsibility appropriately.

Commenting on the new standard, Jim Sutcliffe, Chairman of the BAS, said:

“Regulation places an important responsibility on actuaries to provide information to trustees concerning the values of the assets and liabilities of funeral plan trusts. We have laid out principles that we believe will help ensure that the work is not only of a high quality, but conveys clearly the uncertainties and risks associated with the financial management of a trust.

The funeral plans standard sets a new benchmark in ensuring that trustees receive the actuarial information they need to make the best decisions.”


Copies of the funeral plans standard can be downloaded from the BAS’s website at Funeral Plans TAS version 1 Feb 2011 (PDF).

The BAS has also published a document Funeral Plans TAS: Significant Considerations which reviews the considerations and arguments that were thought significant by the BAS in developing the funeral plans standard. This document can be found at Funeral Plans TAS - Significant considerations Feb 2011 (PDF).

Notes to Editors

  1. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is the UK’s independent regulator responsible for promoting high quality corporate governance and reporting to foster investment.

  2. The Board for Actuarial Standards has a primary objective of promoting competence and transparency of actuarial practice by establishing and improving actuarial technical standards and ensuring that they are coherent, consistent and comprehensive.

  3. The BAS is also publishing an analysis of the responses to the August 2010 exposure draft. It can be downloaded from the BAS’s website at TM1: Statutory Illustrations of Money Purchase Benefits: Analysis of responses to the March 2011 Exp Funeral Plans TAS: Analysis of responses to the August 2010 Exposure Draft.


Document created under a former FRC operating body.

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