Mark Screeton, CEO of SunLife, comments on the annual decline in the cost of funerals in the UK.

SunLife’s latest Cost of Dying report – the longest-running study into funeral prices – has revealed that the cost of a basic funeral has fallen to £3,953.

This is a decrease of 2.5% from the previous year – the second consecutive drop in price, and still only the second-ever fall since the research began in 2004. However, during this 18-year period, there’s been an astonishing 116% rise in funeral costs.

Mark Screeton, SunLife’s CEO, commented:

It’s surprising to see, at a time when everything else is going up in price, that funeral costs have fallen for a second consecutive year. We’ve never witnessed this trend before in our almost two decades of research.

With UK inflation hitting its highest rate in 40 years, this feels like a rare piece of financially positive news among all the other gloomy economic headlines...

The continued fall in funeral costs may, in part, be down to certain trends from the days of lockdown remaining popular, even after the pandemic. Direct cremations, for instance, are a cheaper alternative, and became necessary during COVID-19. Yet we’ve seen their levels relatively unchanged since.

Recent regulation from the Competition and Markets Authority has also ordered funeral directors to display prices on both their premises and website – which wasn’t required before 2021. Some funeral directors told us that, as a result, they’ve reassessed and reduced their prices.

Full release: Cost of a funeral falls for second year in a row

Media contact: Press Office, pressoffice@sunlife.co.uk