Many policies or covers(Funeral Covers, life covers, retirement funds, pension funds and Wills are currently handled by Law firms, individuals and financial service providers like the Banks and others. In most cases, all this institutions do not get timeous knowledge of the passing of their clients which are policy holders, with very few family members of the deceased knowing about their existence. This on its own creates a problem where more often than not these “Policies or covers” go unnoticed and the intended beneficiaries’ ends up not inheriting what is rightfully theirs. This not only deprives the beneficiaries of their rightful benefits but also deprives the deceased of their burial wishes because some “wills or testaments” have burial rights in them which might not be adhered to as a result not knowing about their existence, also some people with funeral/life covers ends up getting paupers’ funeral due to the families not being able to afford the cost of a funeral or relatives cannot be traced
South Africa today is faced with a high number of backlogs in pauper’s burials. According to a study conducted by one insurance company and the newspaper Mail and Guardian as per an article dated 15 Jul 2011, bodies already were piling up at the Chris Hani Baragwaneth Hospital mortuary because so many people in South Africa live in such poverty, they cannot afford the high costs of funerals and so they cannot afford to bury their dead. This is the reality and many bodies lie in morgues well past the statutory 30 days for bodies to stay in a mortuary
There are even the bodies of new-borns found there, because so many babies are simply abandoned at birth. Open a fridge door in these morgues and you’ll find many bodies packed one on top of the other. They are in advanced stages of decomposition. The lack of funds and a lack of planning can often result in a pauper burial. Slow administrative processes and lack of funds have also been blamed for this problem. Some mortuary workers say they have fallen ill as a result of working in close proximity to the bodies, while others complain of a lack of medical treatment for any infections picked up while on duty.
Many times no-one identifies the body and no one comes forward as next of kin. A pauper’s funeral is arranged and paid for by the state. There are some funeral parlours that will handle pauper funerals. They simply make the arrangements and have the body cremated at the expense of the state. In South Africa, AVBOB, which is South Africa’s largest funeral parlour, will offer a pauper’s funeral which will cost around R2200.It is sad but true, but a pauper’s burial in South Africa is becoming a much more common state of affairs, as the country battles with backlogs, poverty, lack of funds and slow administrative processes.
With this in mind, a central benefits management system becomes imperative. This is going to be an online system that can be accessed anytime anywhere for our clients’ convenience. The system will afford members to timeosly update their next of kin’s/Beneficiaries contact details at their finger tips anywhere in the world by just making use of our “App” on their phones or logging onto our website. The system will also notify fund managers of the change in contact details of the policy holder and that of the beneficiary as that change happens