Home Promis Life Funeral Protection Reviewed – Everything You Need to Know

Supposing you had no real savings and suddenly you were hit with an unexpected bill of up to £5,500? That’s the current YouGov assessed average funeral price and suddenly being hit with that sum is exactly what can happen to your family, if you have not made any provision for a funeral. A Promis Life funeral plan is quite simply a life insurance plan, tailored to the needs of covering a funeral plus an additional disbursement to your family. Before we look in detail, let’s quickly review the alternatives for funeral planning.

Avalon - Best UK Funeral Plan

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Avalon Funeral Plans
  • Cremation options available with and without funeral service
  • Coverage starts after one year of payments
  • No restrictions on date and time of service
Avalon Funeral Plans

Funeral Planning Options

There are four main ways to make provision for a funeral and each has it’s own pros and cons:

A Lump Sum Pre-paid Funeral

You pay for your funeral as a single upfront payment in advance, usually to one of the larger organisations. That means a lot of the costs are covered, however, it does mean taking a largish lump of money out of your current income, pension, or savings, which you might not be able to do currently. Also, a few schemes become tricky if you move home after paying upfront to an area where the scheme provider does not provide services.

A Monthly Paid Funeral

You pay for your funeral in monthly instalments. This has the advantage of spreading the load but most schemes do not cover your relatives with the full costs, should you die before having completed the payments.  There are a few that do cover the costs but these have more expensive monthly payments. There is also the same possible snag with moving to any area that the provider does not cover.

Putting Money Into Savings For Your Family

This sounds straightforward but has four issues. The first is that it is usually tied to a will that can take time to execute, so your relatives might not be able to get the cash before the funeral bill comes in. The second is the poor interest rates; the value of savings can be punished by lower interest rates so that means your savings might be worth a lot less by the time your family comes to need them. The third is that savings can attract inheritance tax, so a chunk of your money might go to the inland revenue. The fourth is that if at any point you are being assessed for a Care Home or other care provision, you may be asked to use your savings for that before the care is agreed.

Life Insurance

The fourth option is life insurance with a funeral provision built-in, such as the Promis Life one we review here. The money is not tied to any funeral provider and any surplus from the funeral costs can go to your family. Costs can seem to be a bit higher than some other methods, but it has the advantage of providing a disbursement that your family can use anywhere in the country. If set up correctly, life insurance can be partly or wholly exempt from inheritance tax and also should not count in any care home assessments. Finally, you can build in disbursements for your loved ones, which is not the case in many prepaid funeral plans.

In summary, a good alternative solution to pre-paid funerals is opting for life insurance. That means simply an amount of money is available to your family when you die, which can be sued for funeral expenses with any funeral provider. Any money left over can be used however the family sees fit.

Benefits of Using Promis Life Funeral Protection

A targeted solution is buying funeral insurance from Promis Life, which differs from some life insurance policies as it is for a relatively small sum, currently a maximum of £20,000, and a very fast payout of 2 days. The money can, of course, be used as the family sees fit. It’s worth mentioning that up to £20,000 might seem quite a large sum now, but bear in mind someone 45 years old today taking out a Promis Life policy might reasonably, with the increases in life expectancy as they now are, expect to live another 35 years or more on average and a lot can happen in 35 years

With that in mind, we will now look at Promis Life funeral protection in detail.

Promis Life Funeral Protection Review

Promis Life Protection

Anyone can take out life insurance, however unlike normal life insurance, with Promis Life you get life insurance with a guaranteed two working day pay-out to help cover the cost of a funeral and related expenses. Promis Life provides a life insurance policy that covers you for the whole of your life, not just for your funeral, which is the case for a pre-paid Funeral Plan. When you die there may be many other costs your family has to carry over and above a funeral. The Promis Life offering can be structured up to £20,000 so that’s a good sum to amply cover all costs and also provide part of a bequest to your loved ones.

You choose a level of cover that best suits what you expect your needs to be and what your ability to pay is. Inflation is highly likely to reduce the value of your cover over time, with this or any other policy, so there is an “Inflation Fighter” option, which is probably wise to add to the policy, to help ensure your cover amount is reasonable over a period of time.

Premiums Payment Options

You can choose to pay your premiums at a set amount,(which Promis Life call ‘Level Premiums’. This is the preferred route if you want to know and to fix your rate of payment from the start of the policy as they do not increase.

The alternative is the “Increasing Premiums” option. In this case, premiums are lower than the Level Premium option at outset but they increase 3% PA. Note that there is no cash value at any time. That means if you cancel the plan at any time after the first 30 days you or your family will not get any premiums back from Promis Life and you will no longer be covered by the plan. It is definitely not a savings plan, it is an insurance plan only.

Using a Trust

It’s important you understand the situation with tax, whatever plans for a funeral you make.

As always with tax, it’s a little complicated and things can change in the future. Right now there is no life insurance specific UK tax which affects how the Promis Life funeral protection insurance policy pays out. It’s a good idea to set it up as being ‘In Trust’. A Trust is a legally binding document where the Promis Life policyholder (you) can name the family & friends you want to receive the Promis pay-out when a claim is made.

If you don’t go down the Trust route, you could be subject to inheritance tax, which currently is calculated at 40% of the value of your estate, if that value is over £325,000. That sounds a lot but of course, the value of your home is taken into account. That figure might change at any time in the future too. What’s more, any savings you have made might not get to the family anyway as you always risk some or all of the proceeds from your life savings, getting into a tangle if there are any claims on your estate from people or organisations you owe money to or a disputed will, or there are other estate charges. 

This is one reason why properly set up Life insurance, like that provided by Promis Life, who runs through a Trust process, might be a much better bet for your funeral provision than a savings account. You know for certain with Promis Life that your family will get the money, not the Inland Revenue or a car finance company, or solicitors, or that relative you never heard from in years.

Pros and Cons of a Promis Life Funeral Protection Plan

Pros

  • Unlike some life insurance schemes, there are no medical tests required by Promis Life for acceptance or health questions asked
  • You can add more family members to the Promis Life scheme, creating their own parallel schemes, and you get a 5% discount if you do.
  • There is quite a bit of financial flexibility built into the plan. For example, you can set a very low starting premium per week, less than £2, and increase it later. You can also change your level of cover during the policy, either upwards or downwards, provided you are aged between 30 to 79.
  • The fast payout of 2 working days is a big help to your family, to avoid a sudden funeral bill and if, for any reason, the full money doesn’t arrive with them on time, then Pormis Life will pay an additional £250 as compensation. To make a claim, your loved one just calls a number and the rest happens automatically. The money is paid to the UK bank account of the second Plan Owner, you are the first Plan Owner, named by you on the Promis Life Plan Schedule. Promis Life funeral protection in this sense is very much hassle-free.
  • The Promis Life Inflation Fighter cost option increases your amount of cover by 3% each year. That’s a sensible amount given recent historic inflation, although of course it’s can’t 100% guarantee to cover you whatever happens in the future.

Cons

  • Promis Life cover for the initial 12 months or 24 months is only for accidental death, which means if you die from natural causes in that period, your family are not covered.
  • Since you continue paying until age 90, the total premiums you pay over the full time may be considerably more than your cover amount.
  • In Promis Life reviews people sometimes focus too much on the headlines. You need to carefully look at the real Promis Life funeral protection prices over time of any options or payment plans you sign up for; don’t just go by the initial headline price.

Promis Life Cover Calculator

Promis Life Review Summary

There are some big pluses to Promis Life funeral protection. Your family gets a good sum of money quickly with the minimum of hassle and with no strings attached. However you look at things, it definitely is better than making no plan at all, or setting up a savings account. The main things Promis Life offers that have advantages over pre-paid funerals are total flexibility on which funeral is chosen, where it is held and what else the money is spent on.

Against that, you must bear in mind that you are committed to paying until the age of 90 and failure to pay voids the policy.

So, it’s really down to you if you want the flexibility of Promis Life funeral insurance rather than pre-paying for a specific funeral. There are definite advantages to Promis Life funeral protection for many families if you are happy to make the commitment.

Avalon - Best UK Funeral Plan

Our Rating

Avalon Funeral Plans
  • Cremation options available with and without funeral service
  • Coverage starts after one year of payments
  • No restrictions on date and time of service
Avalon Funeral Plans

FAQs

What happens if I stop paying Promis Life funeral protection cover?

Is it linked to any specific funeral service provider?

How long do I have to pay for?

Do you get any extras for signing up?

Pavel Pudakov

Pavel Pudakov

Pavel is a VPN expert and online privacy evangelist. He holds an MBA in Marketing and has been in Cyber Security for a number of years. With a passion for Digital Marketing & content optimisation, he currently oversees VPN, Antivirus and Password Protector fields for Finixio.

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