SAIF Golden Charter

What’s on the horizon?

After four years heading up Golden Charter’s funeral director business, Malcolm Flanders has taken on a new role in the organisation. As Director of Emerging Market Insight, he will focus on making sense of the changing marketplace and help Independents navigate their way through the emerging business landscape.

The world in which we operate is constantly evolving; customers are changing their preferences, competition is increasing and digital disruptors continue to impact our industry. Those factors, coupled with upcoming changes in regulation, mean that we all have to work harder and smarter to continue to be successful in the months and years ahead.

The picture of what regulation will look like for us and for you, the funeral director, is starting to become clearer. Increased Funeral Planning Authority (FPA) regulations are coming into effect from January 2020, and the process of bringing in Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulation is likely to be complete over the next two years.

Meanwhile, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has started site visits and hearings, and by early next year will publish its preliminary detailed findings, ahead of its statutory deadline for reporting next September.

Your chosen plan provider is in prime position to translate what these changes mean in practice and help you make the right decisions for your business going forward. Through our new Partnership approach, we aim to have a better understanding of your business needs, ambitions and challenges, so that we can respond in a way that is appropriate for you.

We can do more for you by sharing the perils of online disruptors, changes in customer behaviours, and making the impacts of impending regulation clear, so that you can be ready for those changes. Equally, whatever the size and ambition of your business, you won’t always have the resource or access to information to help you adapt as you see fit.

Going forward, I want to concentrate on helping Independents transition to a more regulated world as smoothly as possible, while helping to protect your futures through funeral plans, funeral benefit options, localfuneral.co.uk and other products and services that can help you meet changing family needs.

You will see me in a variety of places – wherever I am needed – be that at your own business premises, a trade event or a specially organised initiative to share with you the latest developments to help you with your own business planning. Please do get in touch directly or through your own Golden Charter Business Manager if I can help in any way.