[Semaphor]

My wife is Sotho from South Africa. While there were certainly a bunch of, to me, very strange practices when my FiL died, it was nothing like what was mentioned in the article.

That said, funeral insurance is extremely common in SA, as even normal burials can be pretty expensive.

[vladvasiliu]

> That said, funeral insurance is extremely common in SA, as even normal burials can be pretty expensive.

This is off-topic, but how does funeral insurance even work? You're guaranteed to die at some point, right? To me, insurance is there to hedge against something not very likely, but expensive. The odds are you're going to pay money in, and never see it back (if you don't get sick / crash your car / whatever).

Is funeral insurance just some form of forced savings?

[toast0]

Funeral insurance is small policy life insurance.

Profitability comes from three prongs: many policies are canceled before a covered event, premiums are often collected for many years and have time to be invested before a covered event, and bundling with inappropriate investments.

For examples of inappropriate investments, you can look at whole life and variable annuities. Most people would be better off spending the same amount on term life + a stock index fund; assuming access to stock index funds, which is probably not a given in many African countries.

[herodoturtle]

Indeed it is forced savings but with the benefit of covering your funeral expenditure if it is required suddenly and unexpectedly.

For context, it might cost you $5 per month, and give you funeral cover of $500.

As OP mentioned it is very common in South Africa, likely owed to the unpredictable life expectancy. All the large insurers offer it, it’s a massive market.

[stackbutterflow]

You're more likely to die each year that passes.

If you subscribe to an insurance in your 20s it'll cost you less per month than if you start it in your 60s.

[eudamoniac]

Same way as term life insurance, I expect

[Dead_Lemon]

Funerals are a big thing in South Africa. It can be often to the same level as a wedding, where families will take out loans to host the event. Hence the funeral insurance being common. You go to an ATM and get advertised Funeral Cover, offered by your bank.

[porridgeraisin]

Funerals are huge in india too. It runs for 13 days in some communities. To be clear, the actual cremation happens immediately, but the funeral ceremonies continue for 13 days after that.

Most of the expenses are days of one-meal-a-day for guests, and the general extra expenses of having a lot of relatives over at your house. The ceremonies themselves are fairly cheap - it's mostly prayers.

However there is no insurance and so on, since the aforementioned expenses scale with usual QoL.

[Semaphor]

Might depend on the tribe, and on personal circumstances. The biggest/weirdest thing for me was the whole night vigil and brewing (Umqombothi) and cooking/roasting of the lamb to honor the elders, which had several guests, but not on a wedding level.