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Every winter like clockwork, SunLife, a financial services company that specialises in over 50's life insurance, releases a report into funeral costs in Britain. It is always widely covered in the media.
The report, entitled SunLife Cost of Dying, is written and researched solely by SunLife. The headline is always the same: "Funeral costs are going up" or "Funeral costs outstrip inflation". You may or may not conclude that this is convenient for a firm that sells life insurance, but it is a legitimate business tactic as long as what the report says is true. The problem is it isn't true.
Take for example SunLife's well-publicised claim that the average simple funeral in the UK in 2025 costs £4,285. SunLife lead with this figure in every press release. Yet the figure is wrong. The reason it is wrong is because SunLife include extra optionals like limousines in what they define as a simple funeral. This makes no sense at all, other than to artificially bump the price up.
Funeral directors will always provide a hearse to transport the coffin as part of their simple funeral package, but they understandably do not provide limousines because they are optional. The Standardised Price List, introduced by the government to promote transparency in the funeral profession, does not include limousines as part of a simple, attended funeral.
So why does SunLife? We reached out and asked them. They responded: "The items included in our funeral costs index were established 20 years ago when a limousine was considered standard. We have kept these items the same in order to have a consistent, like-for-like price comparison."
Twenty years ago? The iPhone didn't exist twenty years ago. For SunLife to include limousines as a simple funeral cost because some funeral directors did twenty years ago is disingenous at best. They know full well a limousine isn't part of a simple funeral, but still they use it in their costing model to inflate the overall price.
It doesn't stop there. SunLife also include doctors' fees in their average simple funeral cost. The only problem with that is doctors' fees were abolished in September 2024. SunLife's Cost of Dying report was published in January 2025.
Asked why they erroneously included doctors' fees in their average simple funeral cost, SunLife replied, "Our latest research took place between May and July 2024, so before doctors' fees were abolished." As excuses go, that has to be up there with the dog ate my homework.
The bottom line is SunLife are simply not telling the truth when it comes to the average cost of a simple funeral in Britain, and that's not good for the public or the funeral profession.
