In March 2019, the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) exercised its powers and made a market investigation reference in relation to the supply of funerals and related goods and services in the United Kingdom. They appointed from its panel a group of four independent members to conduct the market investigation and publish a final report. They were required to decide whether any feature, or combination of features, of each relevant market prevents, restricts or distorts competition and thereby has an adverse effect on competition (AEC) and, if so, what action should be taken.
After quite some delays and extensions, partly due to Covid-19, on 15th April 2021, the CMA published a Notice of its intention to make an Order as part of a package of remedies to remedy, mitigate or prevent the AEC and any resulting customer detriment, which it identified in the Final Report.
The CMA Order is a lengthy document which requires funeral directors and crematoria to adhere to many different things. For example, the publishing of a standardised price list. This has to be on the website, not more than 1 click from the home page, A2/A3 sized posters in reception areas, windows etc. There is also the need for reporting various figures to the CMA depending on the size of the company. There are different requirements for companies with 5 or more branches and 10 or more branches. The CMA can also ask for smaller companies to also supply these figures at their request.
How Eulogica can help
There are various ways that Eulogica can help with this CMA order. Firstly, templates can be built to easily allow your staff to add the CMA’s various funeral packages with pricing already set up if these are requested by a family.
For companies with 10 branches or more, setting up various ‘CMA’ templates in Eulogica can help when having to report the further information required by the CMA. This will then allow you to create a report between certain dates to show the types of funerals carried out, as well as the financial figures.
Secondly, the financial data for the required figures for the CMA can be run off as a simple report, making life easier for companies with 5 branches or more, and also for the smaller ones if they are asked for various figures by the CMA.
If ‘CMA’ style templates are set up for those companies with 10 or more branches, then it will also be easy to report on the types of funerals carried out over a time period.
Please feel free to contact us if you think you require any templates or reports setting up. We can be contacted by email at support@eulogica.com or by telephone on 0845 3519 935.