Funny oh death: Funeral policy buyers want it for others

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Funny oh death: Funeral policy buyers want it for others
20 Sep 2008
JoyFM Online

And why not? Whoever counts his life shorter than the next neighbour, especially when that neighbour is older, even if by hours.

Fact is everyone thinks some other person in the family must die first, the unpredictability of life and death being a reality often lost on us all.

Only last year, Metropolitan Life Ghana - a joint venture of Metropolitan Insurance Company and Metropolitan Holdings Limited of South Africa - introduced the FAMILY FUNERAL PROVIDER, an insurance policy to cushion holders against sudden deaths in the family.

It was hailed by insurance experts as a unique service to bail bereaved families out of their misery when at the loss of a family member, surviving members usually must squeeze whatever stones are at their disposal for 'water' to see off their dead beloved with a befitting burial.

Key market players had assumed that policy holders would subscribe to the service for themselves to spare their relations any hustle should they pass on.

Well, they were wrong, as narrates Mr. Diop Frimpong, CEO of Metropolitan Life Ghana, because policy holders want it for others, “usually their parents.”

“It is funny, but the trend is that no one thinks of death for themselves. It is usually for the parents that people buy it, and if you ask them why they won't buy for themselves, they shrug the question off.

“They forget local adages that admonish that just as dried leaves fall off trees, fresh leaves also fall. All they know is that death is far away from them,” said Diop.

And the trend is not peculiar to Ghanaian environments, as I soon learned from Wilhelm van Zyl, CEO of Metropolitan Holdings Limited, who comes from an environment where funeral policies have some established practice.

“That instance is a financial burden; maybe your parents pass away, the financial burden will fall on you so you need to insure against the risk of them passing away. From that perspective, …you insure your interest in that. That is typically why you want to buy also for somebody else because in a community where there is a lot of social solidarity and sharing of financial load, in that event when somebody passes away, that burden would probably fall on you and you can give somebody the respect of send off.”

Zyl was in Ghana to mix with the rest of Metropolitan's Ghanaian team and to assess the local market, having being appointed CEO on last April.

Interestingly, Diop told me the trend is changing somewhat, with people also beginning to understand the need to buy for themselves, except that the pace is snail-like. What is also good is that the are policies for everyone, and maybe the next time you are close to a trustworthy insurance company, like Metropolitan, you may want to ask about policies for yourself, before third parties.

We all must go one day, ini?

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