Funeral Insurance Defined

Funeral Insurance is a pre-paid policy that can cover all the costs involved with the funeral. Monthly payments are made by the insured to the insurance company. Upon the death of the insured, the funeral director will receive the funds to cover the costs for all aspects of the funeral from body preparation to chapel service to burial. The big advantage of funeral insurance is that it allows the insured to take advantage of current prices and not have to pay the prices that may be in effect at the time of death.

Reasons to Have Funeral Insurance

Death will occur, so having the costs covered upfront makes good sense. As mentioned above, having funeral insurance that is paid monthly removes a significant financial burden that may exist when a person dies. It is also beneficial because the insured can make plans well ahead of the time when emotions will not affect decision-making. More careful thought and planning can occur upfront when a funeral insurance policy is purchased.

Things That Funeral Insurance Covers

Funeral insurance will cover many of the things that are involved with a funeral but may vary depending on the insurance policy and the coverage selected. But these are the key things that most funeral insurance policies cover:

• Casket
• Embalming and preparation of body
• Funeral service
• Celebrant
• Flowers
• Limousines and transportation
• Burial plot
• Head stone

While these are some of the basic things that are typically covered, customers should inquire with the insurance company to be sure of the coverage that they will get at the time of death. They should find out if the policy has inflation coverage that will provide adequate payment for the above items in the future. It is smart to make sure that any desired extras are spelled out in the policy so that there won’t be any surprises when the time comes to utilize the policy.

Getting Funeral Insurance Quotes

As has been outlined above, selecting a good funeral insurance policy is a smart move for Australians. Cost savings, peace of mind, and advanced planning are some of the reasons why having funeral insurance is a good idea. The final step to getting a good funeral insurance plan is obtaining price quotes. When getting quotes, there a certain factors that a customer should consider when comparing quotes and coverage. They are:

• Coverage for all family members
• Accidental death benefits – Double or triple benefits
• Money back guarantee
• Free monthly or fortnightly payments
• Lifetime policy
• No limitation due to health problems
• Age limitations for guaranteed coverage

Once an ideal price is achieved for funeral insurance that has the desired coverage, Australians can rest assured that they will have the peace of mind necessary to ease any financial burdens for their family at the time of death.

Buying Physical Gold

One way that you could choose to get involved in the gold market is to buy gold bullion. This could involve buying and holding gold bars or gold coins. When getting involved in this type of investment, you have to consider that liquidity of your investment. For example, if you decide to cash out your investment at some point, you’ll have to sell an entire piece. If you have a gold bar, selling gold can be difficult because it is worth so much for a single piece that the available buyers are limited. Holding smaller pieces usually works better because you have more potential buyers to work with. When holding physical gold, you also have to consider the safety of warehousing it and shipping it to a buyer. Finding gold buyers NZ may not always be easy and you’ll need to figure out how to get paid while sending the gold to a buyer when you want to cash out.

Funds

Another way that some investors choose to get involved in the gold market is by buying shares of funds that focus on gold investment. For example, mutual funds and exchange traded funds are two options to consider when you want to get started with gold. Gold mutual funds usually focus on buying stocks of gold mining companies. By comparison, gold ETF’s actually buy gold for the portfolio. This makes the gold ETF more of a pure play on gold speculation. With the gold mutual fund, you are getting more of a leveraged investment on gold. This happens because when gold prices change, the profits of the company can change rapidly. The mining company’s costs stay roughly the same, but the profits can fluctuate drastically.

One of the advantages of investing in either one of these types of fund is that you can get started for a relatively low initial investment. By comparison, investing in gold bullion would require you to put up thousands of dollars all at once.

Futures and Option Contracts

If you wish to take a more direct approach to speculating on gold, buying futures and options contracts are other options to consider. With a futures contract, you agree to buy or sell a specific amount of gold on a certain date in the future. With an options contract, you get the option of buying or selling a contract by a date in the future, without being committed to it.

Regardless of which option you choose to pursue, getting started in gold makes sense. Despite the economic uncertainty in today’s world, gold has been performing well and is poised to do so in the future.

•         Just switch in the computer and click the internet explorer or you may be able to get this facility by your mobile, if you have activated internet by the company.

•         Then just write the Easy Loan on any Search Engine Optimize.

•         Search Engine Optimize will display many sites regarding you required address.

•         Now you will see that many lenders are offering the easy loan at low interest rate.

•         You should very careful while choosing the lender because someone may get undue benefit of your hurry.

•         Just fill the online application and click the submit option.

•         Money will be transferred in your account within no time.

Requirements are very easy and one can get the loan in his account the very next day without much hassle. Online companies are dealing in these installment loans without going into the details of why and for what purpose a person needs the loan. A secured loan is available with low interest rates and there is long term for repayment. This is why it is the best form of personal loan.

The South Australian Council of Social Service has spoken out against payday lending companies after receiving a volume of complaints from concerned consumers.

Borrowers are being unfairly lured into taking out loans which, in some cases, appear to be interest-free, but which instead incur massive fees.

Cash Converters is one firm that has come under particular scrutiny for this practice. Despite their claims that no interest is payable on their loans, the charges often result in huge return rates for the lender.

The Advertiser reported that a desperate mother who took out a loan of $1,500 from the Cash Shop faces repayments totalling $2,600 in just four months – 73% interest.

Consumers turning to payday loans because of their struggles against the increasing cost of living are finding their problems exacerbated by interest rates and/or fees in excess of 100%.

“Extraordinary” and Exploitative

Ross Womersley, executive director of the Council of Social Service, conceded that such lenders fulfil a service, but slammed the “extraordinary” costs that struggling consumers had to face.

Unfortunately many payday lenders – not all – really do exploit the vulnerability of people with interest rates that are just absurd and unreasonable.

Of more concern to many will be the important market position that payday lenders have forged for themselves as joblessness rises.

To Womersley, a lot of lenders are worried about speaking out against these institutions because they are concerned about having to turn to them again.

And surreptitious providers are finding ways to charge rates of up to 1,000% APR, say those seeking stronger regulation for the industry.

It seems unthinkable, but these rates pale in comparison to the 4,000%+ APR charged by some providers in the UK, where payday loans are big business.

A recent update on our sister Finance Blog in the UK tells how experts, journalists, and consumer groups turned on payday lending company Wonga after it was caught marketing itself to university students as a credible alternative to the standard government-backed student loan – despite the firm’s eye-watering 4,000% APR.

Many such lenders suggest that their business model can only survive through higher rates. It is easy to see such rates as proportionate to the level of risk. But such companies can profit massively, and their owners too.

Is it time for regulation? It’s certainly worth trying for affordable credit in any shape or form before subjecting yourself to legal loan sharking. See if Which4U can help.

Keith McDonald
Which4U Editor

It hasn’t been a particularly good year for banks across the globe.

Many are still being downgraded by credit ratings agencies. Standard & Poor’s, addressed in the last post here, upset leading European figures when it issued a threat of widespread sovereign downgrades on the eve of the European summit.

Many banks and governments alike are struggling to raise funds or to find manageable rates at which to borrow. Those that can, on the other hand, are exploiting every drop of political advantage they can muster.

Many banks are commiting various kinds of atrocities. Many are simply finding ways – even unwittingly – to frustrate their customers.

Scandal-Struck

A number of UK banks have been caught up in scandals involving the elderly. As reported on our sister blog in the UK, a succession of banks have been caught and fined for mis-selling risky investment products to vulnerable consumers. Pensioners of 83 years on average were pressured into investing six-figure sums of their inheritence into long-term risk-heavy products, often when they were not even expected to survive the investment term. Collectively, banks have faced compensation payments approaching £150 million ($233 million).

Banks were also accused of pushing for sales of packaged accounts, which, in many cases, provided extras that consumers didn’t need. Meanwhile, bank charges are increasing, with tax-payer owned RBS charging £60 ($93) per day for insufficient funds in an account.

Australian banks have also pushed for the hard-sell on fee-driven products. Concerned staff members at different organisations turned whistleblower to reveal the weekly quotas they were expected to meet by coercing customers to sign up to credit cards, loans and insurance policies.

The Financial Services Union warned that confidence in banks’ advice would crumble if consumers couldn’t be sure whether advice was in their best interests or for an advisor’s job security. The UK’s Financial Services Authority, meanwhile, hopes that a voluntary code for UK banks, plus more explicit guidance about savings protection, will help to rebuild consumer confidence in banking.

Interest, Outrest, Unrest

Australian banks have come under intense scrutiny in recent months after showing considerable reluctance to pass on the benefits of federal rate cuts designed to boost the economy. Delays in responding to the recent December cuts saw the largest banks save themselves a cool $7 million per day.

While home loan rates have been passed on in full in most cases, banks have compensated by altering savings rates and maintaining higher credit card rates. Struggling retailers have remonstrated that federal cuts have not been passed on to credit cards.

Further unrest, for consumers and retailers alike, has been caused by a succession of connectivity and security failures. Commonwealth Bank suffered outages in August and December, when networking problems saw customers unable to use debit or credit cards at ATMs or EFTPOS for 5-6 hours.

If other banks dared to stifle a snigger, ANZ was alerted to a security flaw with its online banking which allowed access to statements through a browser’s history. The problem could take weeks to fix, the bank says.

Such security and connectivity issues inspire little confidence in the technology that banks hope to introduce, such as CommBank’s mobile ‘Ka-Ching’ app, which uses Near Field Communication technology and relies heavily on secure networks.

End of all Hope?

Consumers are becoming more aware of the furtive world of banking finance, and understand that the downgrading of major banks across the world makes it more expensive for banks to operate.

But banks cannot rely on sympathy while their actions test consumer patience. If consumers turn their backs on particular banks and the flow of retail funds begins to dry up, the problems will swell and increasingly fewer people will care about the outcome.

Keith McDonald
Which4U Editor

It is widely predicted that central interest rates, which had remained untouched since April 2009, will fall for the second consecutive month when the Federal Bank’s committee convenes next week for the final time in 2011.

But the untimely downgrading of Australian banks by credit ratings agencies this week has put a new complexion on the immediate forecast for bank funding, irrespective of whether a central rate cut is announced or not. Consumers are set to lose out when they may have expected to benefit.

Downgrading

Standard & Poor’s have downgraded a number of major banks worldwide, including Barclays, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, UBS in Switzerland and the Bank of America. In Australia, the Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, National Australia Bank and Westpac all fell by one grade to AA[-], the agency’s fourth-highest rating. Macquarie Group was cut by two levels to BBB, a grade which anticipates a level of risk from adverse economic conditions.

What these reductions do is heighten insecurity for banks to lend to one another. This, in turn, raises the cost of lending as banks insure themselves from that elevated level of risk.

Such costs will no doubt be absorbed by consumers through less competitive savings and loan rates. A central interest rate cut may prove welcome only insofar as it prevents loan rates from rising.

Crucial Challenges

Fellow ratings agency Moody’s warned that Australian banks faced ‘various crucial challenges over the next 12-18 months’ as the costs of bank funding begin to rise.

Moody’s announcement declared the Australian banking system as stable, but warned that profitability would depend on ‘how severe and how protracted any contagion from the European sovereign crisis may be’. A continuation of the ensuing Eurozone crisis could result in a reduction in overseas investor demand and increased bank funding costs.

However, despite S&P’s moves to downgrade Australian banks, Moody’s senior vice-president, Patrick Winsbury, highlighted a number of core strengths that would benefit Australian banks as they prepared for a rougher journey ahead.

Australia’s banks have built sizeable capital buffers to absorb possible weakness in asset quality, and they have a good measure of flexibility to deal with the challenging conditions.

The stable outlook also reflects our analysis that Australia has good monetary and fiscal policy flexibility to deal with weaker economic conditions.

Winsbury also praised banks’ attempts to reduce their reliance on offshore funding.

While we continue to view the Australian banking system’s relatively high proportion of offshore wholesale funding to be a structural sensitivity, customer deposits have been growing faster than loans as deleveraging continues, allowing the major banks to reduce their reliance on offshore wholesale funding.

Weathering a Storm

Australian banks would appear to be as well positioned as any to withstand the storm. National Australia Bank suffered an additional blow, however, as its UK based operations, Yorkshire Bank and Clydesdale Bank, both had their ratings slashed for the third time in three months.

Cameron Clyne, chief executive of NAB, defended the ratings cuts against assumptions made by the agencies through their tighter evaluation criteria which account for parent company support.

While S&P has changed its assumptions, in substance, the nature of NAB’s support for Clydesdale Bank is unchanged.

The UK and New Zealand are both currently weaker banking territories than Australia, S&P have noted, and these weaknesses are inherent in individual banks’ credit profiles.

So, as the noose begins to tighten, Australian banks, on average, have positioned themselves well. Consumers will no doubt feel the pinch, but they might be consoled by the (sobering) thought that they are only likely to encounter a light shower rather than the torrent many other nations are facing.

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With bank rates likely to worsen in relation to the central interest rate, could you use a better savings account while the opportunity is there? Visit Which4U’s savings account listings today and see what deals are available.

Keith McDonald
Which4U Editor