Firstly, could you briefly introduce Homesteaders Life Company (Homesteaders)?
Homesteaders is a national leader in providing products and services to promote and support advanced funeral planning and funding for end-of-life expenses. Since issuing our first policy in 1906, Homesteaders has emerged as the trusted name in the funeral profession because of the stability, security and integrity of our preneed products. We are a mutual company, owned by our policy holders, so we are accountable to the families we serve. Today, Homesteaders serves about 3,000 funeral homes across the country. We employ more than 250 employees nationally, with about 75 percent working out of our home office in West Des Moines, Iowa. Many of our team members are industryleading account executives in the field, so we have a very deep understanding of the day-to-day realities of the work. We pride ourselves on our positive culture and are consistently recognized as a Top US Workplace.
Homesteaders has been operating for almost 120 years. Can you elaborate on the company’s history and the industry expertise that stems from this?
Homesteaders traces our roots back to the early 1900s when very few families had breathing room for large expenses. The death
of a loved one could cripple their financial position. As John E. Paul assisted families in his community in Des Moines, Iowa, he realized the financial disruption caused by death was largely due to the unexpected cost of funeral and burial services. So, in the fall of 1905, he proposed a solution: The Homesteaders, a small, fraternal benefit society dedicated to helping families plan and pay for final expenses. Under John’s leadership, The Homesteaders issued Policy Certificate Number One on 24th February, 1906. By the end of that year, more than 500 families had secured end-of-life funding.
As Homesteaders enters our 118th year of providing secure, reliable funeral funding, we operate at the intersection of the funeral profession, the insurance industry and the consumer market. We are focused on understanding how each of these areas influences and impacts the consumer’s end-of-life experience.
What differentiates Homesteaders from the competition?
Since Homesteaders is owned by its policyholders, we are not accountable to shareholders but to the families we serve. We are a monoline company, solely operating in the end-of-life space, so we’re unique in our ability to focus on the needs of funeral providers without having to split our resources between competing business units.
Homesteaders has a competitive product portfolio, backed by a secure and conservative investment strategy and more than a century of financial strength and stability. We offer comprehensive marketing and operational support to help funeral providers connect with more families than ever before, including everything from lead generation and text-based aftercare to appointment setting and online funeral sales, all centered around EnGauge, a robust customer relationship management system (CRM) custombuilt through Salesforce.
Homesteaders also partners with more than 40 of the profession’s leading marketing organizations, so our customers can pick the firm that is the best fit for their business. When you combine all of that with loyalty programs like PartnerPoints® and Casket Price Protection as well as our new Funeral Home Conventional Business loan program, you get a comprehensive offering that is difficult for any competitor to match.
How have innovative investments and technology partnerships impacted Homesteaders and its customers?
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We have made significant investments in the last few years in emerging new technology that has helped funeral home customers and agents respond to a shift in the way consumers shop for and purchase their funeral plans. We introduced eFuneral, a unique digital sales and lead generation platform that empowered funeral homes to attract, convert and close preneed and at-need sales. We partnered with insurtech companies like Benekiva to streamline our claims submission process.
Additional investments like our award-winning text-based aftercare program and our in-depth consumer analytics engine
have provided funeral professionals with tools to help them better serve families without increasing headcount.
How did Homesteaders adjust to the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how has this adaptation made the company stronger than ever today?
Much of Homesteaders’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic mirrored what you saw at employers across the country, but we also faced challenges unique to our business model. Social distancing requirements prevented our agents and funeral home customers from helping families plan and host funeral services in person, yet the rising COVID-19 death toll drove up demand while simultaneously causing more consumers to think about end-of-life concerns.
Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, we maintained the highest degree of operational standards while sustaining forward momentum on key initiatives that will help us achieve our long-term goal of helping funeral homes reach more families than ever before, and positioning Homesteaders as a leading innovator in the preneed space.
Looking ahead, what are the company’s key priorities for the coming year?
We are excited to see many of the investments we have made in the last few years begin to bear fruit. New technology offerings and partnerships have positioned Homesteaders as a marketleading innovator in the funeral profession. Additional investments in the consumer space, including the most comprehensive and detailed market research the profession has seen in decades, have made our partners and customers more connected to consumers than ever before.
As we look at the year ahead, our team is focused on developing even deeper connections with consumers on behalf of our funeral home customers and agents through thoughtful and strategic investments in digital tools, grief support and more, enabling us to provide even better service.
Helping people design a better farewell, benefitting those they love.
