13 Jul 2017

Plans for Samoa to have funeral expenses insurance

11:19 am on 13 July 2017

Samoa has been cited by two groups as a place where funeral expense insurance could help families meet funeral costs.

funeral, generic, coffin, death

Photo: 123RF

One of the groups, the Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme, has established the insurance product in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

The programme's Michael Carr said part of their work now is researching the suitability of the insurance product for Samoa.

He said previous work with the Commercial Bank of Samoa highlighted the reasons Samoans hadn't bothered with funeral insurance.

"The top four reasons why Samoans did not buy insurance was that they did not really know what insurance was, they thought they didn't need it, they didn't know where to buy insurance from and the fourth reason was they thought the insurance was too expensive, so when we're looking at Samoa in particularly we need to look at the reasons that I've mentioned and how this product should cope with these concerns and barriers if it's going to be successful."