Funeral Plan Sellers

Funeral plans are not regulated in Spain. There are no legal requirements for Funeral plan providers to be regulated, and there is no regulatory body for funeral planning although there is a code of practice. 

You may as well hand money over to a stranger in the street. 

Thanks for yours Kavanagh.  I admire Spain in many ways but they are 50 years behind the times on some basic Consumer legislation.

A Code of Practice is likely to be unenforceable in the first place - particularly if the seller has done a runner with your money.

But I don't understand why people buy Funeral Plans in the first place - isn't Life Assurance a better deal?

You are correct acer. Many of the public are naive and just believe whatever they are told. You constantly get these expert funeral plan sellers in the supermarket foyers who will persuade you with all their lies that you are a fool if you don’t buy a plan, yesterday they were selling dog biscuits.

Just like those that win umpteen millions on some far away foreign lottery, send thousands of to collect winnings, and openly admit they were surprised they won because they never entered it.

And yet virtually all Spanish families have a funeral plan or funeral insurance in place. As most funerals in Spain take place within 2 days, they feel it important to have everything ready..

My bank manager was rather surprised when I told him we didn't have funeral insurance and he said that was very unusual in Spain as it is quite difficult to get things in place without it. 

That may be the case, but is that because the Spanish are used to having no or negligible financial regulation and therefore forced to take financial risks?

Does your bank manager and his staff sell unregulated funeral plans?