Burial Insurance
Burial insurance — the industry calls it final expense life insurance — is a small whole life policy bought to cover a funeral and the bills that arrive with it. It is not a funeral plan, and it is not a special kind of product. Knowing what it actually is protects you from the way it is usually sold.
Read this first
Burial insurance is life insurance. It is not a prepaid funeral contract and not a funeral plan. The benefit is paid in cash to the beneficiary you name, and that person decides how it is spent.
The problem it solves
A funeral is one of the few large bills a family has to settle within days, at the worst possible moment, usually before any estate is available to pay for it. Most people would rather that did not land on their children, and most people also do not want to think about it long enough to plan for it.
The straightforward answer is a small life insurance policy with a named beneficiary. The complication is that buying life insurance in your seventies, with a couple of prescriptions, is a different exercise from buying it at forty-five. That is the gap this product fills, and it fills it by relaxing the underwriting rather than by being a different kind of insurance.
Three things happen, in this order
You choose an amount, usually a modest one
Enough to cover a funeral and the loose ends. Across the industry the average simplified issue policy is about $14,500 and the average guaranteed issue policy about $9,800, per LIMRA and the Life Insurers Council's 2024 final expense survey of 28 reporting companies.
You answer a few health questions — or none at all
A short questionnaire plus a prescription-history check is called simplified issue. No questions at all is called guaranteed issue, and it always comes with a waiting period on the death benefit. Which one you should be offered depends entirely on your health.
The benefit is paid in cash to the person you name
Not to a funeral home, unless you separately assign it to one. Your beneficiary receives the money and decides what it pays for — the funeral, the last medical bills, the outstanding card, or nothing to do with any of it.
Who this suits, and who it does not
The second list matters more than the first. An agent who only writes the first one is selling, not advising.
Worth considering if…
- You want to leave enough to bury you without leaving a bill, and you are not trying to solve anything larger than that.
- Your health would make a fully underwritten policy slow, expensive or impossible — but you have not actually asked anyone to check.
- You want a named beneficiary who receives cash quickly, rather than money tied up in an estate or committed in advance to one funeral home.
Probably not for you if…
- You are in reasonable health. Ask to be quoted fully underwritten whole life alongside this, every time. Relaxed underwriting is paid for by everybody in the pool, so a healthy buyer who takes simplified issue without comparing is paying the price of the sickest person in it.
- Someone depends on your income. This is the wrong shape and the wrong size — term life buys many times the death benefit per dollar for a working-age adult. Small-face whole life is not an income replacement plan.
- You already have the money set aside and it is genuinely available to your family. Then you would be insuring a cost you can already cover, and the honest answer is to keep your money.
Who we are appointed with
We are independent and appointed with the life insurance companies below. Which of them we would approach for you depends on the product, your age, your state and your health history — underwriting differs sharply between companies, and that is the practical reason for working with someone who can approach more than one.
- Aetna
- Allianz Life
- American-Amicable Life
- Americo
- Ameritas
- Assurity
- Athene
- AuguStar Financial
- Banner Life
- Brighthouse Financial
- Cincinnati Life
- Columbus Life
- Corebridge Financial
- Equitable
- EquiTrust Life
- F&G Life
- Foresters Financial
- Gerber Life
- Guarantee Trust Life (GTL)
- John Hancock
- Lafayette Life
- Liberty Bankers Life
- Lincoln Financial Group
- Manhattan Life
- MassMutual
- Mutual of Omaha
- Mutual Trust Life
- National Life Group (Life Insurance Company of the Southwest)
- National Western Life
- Nationwide
- New York Life
- North American Company for Life and Health
- OneAmerica
- Pacific Life
- Petersen International Underwriters (Lloyd's of London)
- Principal
- Protective Life
- Prudential
- Royal Neighbors of America
- Sagicor Life
- SBLI
- Securian Financial (Minnesota Life)
- Security Mutual Life
- Symetra
- Transamerica
- William Penn Life
- Zurich
Being appointed with a company does not mean that company offers every product on this page, and we do not represent every insurer. Which company suits you depends on the product, your age, your state and your health history. We publish no benefit, rate or feature for any company here until we can cite it to that company's own current material.
Servicing only — not available for new business
We can help with an existing policy from this company — reviewing it or understanding what you already own. We are not appointed to write new business with it, so a new policy would be placed with one of the companies above.
- Genworth
Questions people actually ask
Is burial insurance the same as a prepaid funeral plan?
No, and the difference matters. Burial insurance is a life insurance policy that pays cash to a beneficiary you name, who may spend it on anything. A prepaid funeral plan is a contract with a specific funeral home for specific goods and services. A prepaid plan can lock in today's prices, but it is tied to that provider, and it can be difficult to move if you relocate or the home changes hands.
What is a graded death benefit, and will my policy have one?
A graded death benefit means that if you die of natural causes during the first two or three years, the policy pays back your premiums plus interest rather than the full face amount. Accidental death is normally paid in full from day one. Guaranteed issue policies effectively always work this way; simplified issue policies usually pay in full immediately, though some grade the benefit for higher-risk applicants. This is the single most important thing to establish before you sign anything, and any agent should tell you without being asked.
Can I be turned down?
With simplified issue, yes — there is a short health questionnaire and a prescription-history check, and some conditions are declined. With guaranteed issue there are no health questions and acceptance is guaranteed within the age band, which is exactly why it carries the waiting period and costs more per dollar of coverage. Being declined by one company does not mean being declined by all of them; underwriting differs, which is the practical reason to work with someone who can approach more than one.
Could I pay in more than the policy pays out?
Yes, it is possible, and you should understand how before you buy. These are small policies with premiums payable for life, so somebody who buys at an older age and then lives a long time can pay in more than the face amount. Whole life builds cash value, which softens that, and some policies stop requiring premiums at a stated age. Ask for the specific policy's paid-up age and its cash value — a straight answer to this question tells you a great deal about who you are dealing with.
How much should I buy?
Start from the actual number rather than a round one: get a current general price list from a local funeral home, which they are required to provide, add the cemetery costs, and add whatever small debts would otherwise fall to your family. That total is your answer. Buying more than that is buying life insurance for a different purpose, which is fine — but it should be a decision you made, not a number an agent suggested.
Ask for a quote on Burial Insurance
Tell us how to reach you and which state you are in. A licensed agent calls back, usually the same business day, and will tell you plainly if a fully underwritten policy would serve you better.
The other three
Same family, different jobs. Match the product to how long the need lasts.
Term Life Insurance
A death benefit for a fixed number of years, at the lowest cost per dollar of coverage of any life product. Bought when someone depends on your income and the need has an end date.
Worth a look if someone depends on your income and you can name roughly when that stops being true.
Whole Life Insurance
Permanent coverage with a guaranteed death benefit, a guaranteed level premium and a guaranteed cash value schedule. The guarantees are the product, and they are what you pay for.
Worth a look if the need genuinely never ends and you can sustain the premium for decades.
Indexed Universal Life Insurance
Universal life whose interest credit is linked to the movement of a market index, limited by a cap or participation rate and protected by a floor. Flexible, genuinely complicated, and the most aggressively marketed life product there is.
Worth a look if you want permanent coverage with flexibility and will actually read the illustration.