Funeral funding questions, answered

Funeral funding, also called insurance assignment funding, lets a funeral home be paid right away when a family is paying for the funeral with a life insurance policy. The beneficiary assigns part of the policy benefit to cover the funeral, TOPTIER Funeral Funding verifies the policy and pays the funeral home, and TOPTIER then works the claim through with the insurance company.

The funeral home does not wait weeks for the insurer to pay, and the family does not have to pay out of pocket while the claim is processed.

Funeral homes and cemeteries across the United States, from single locations to groups with many branches. More than 4,000 funeral homes have worked with TOPTIER.

Families do not apply to TOPTIER directly. A family that wants to pay for a funeral with life insurance should ask their funeral director whether the funeral home works with TOPTIER Funeral Funding.

Most claims are funded the same day. TOPTIER Funeral Funding completes 99% of claims in 24 hours or less, using a two-step process: verify the policy, then pay.

A claim takes longer when the insurer needs more paperwork. When that happens TOPTIER tells the funeral home which documents are missing, and they can be uploaded online.

A funeral home can file online through TOPTIER Connect or call TOPTIER at (727) 475-7555 and have the claim processed by phone.

To file online, the funeral home creates a free account, adds its location and signs the TOPTIER onboarding agreement electronically in the browser. From then on every claim is a three-step form - the deceased's details, the employer and insurance policies, then the amounts - followed by a summary to review before submitting. Entering a claim takes about five minutes.

TOPTIER Funeral Funding asks for:

• The deceased's full name, date of birth, date of death, cause of death, marital status and where the death occurred.
• Whether a death certificate is available.
• If the insurance came through an employer: the employer's name and phone number, a contact person and the deceased's employment status.
• For each policy: the insurance company, the policy number, the face amount and the beneficiaries.
• The total funeral service amount, and an Advance Family Pay amount if the family is receiving one.

If the insurer needs anything more after the claim is filed, TOPTIER asks for it and the funeral home uploads it online.

Opening an account and using TOPTIER Connect costs the funeral home nothing. TOPTIER charges a processing fee on each claim: a percentage of the claim, agreed with the funeral home when it signs up.

When filing, the funeral home chooses whether the fee is added on top of the service amount or included in it, and the claim summary shows the fee and the totals before anything is submitted. Call (727) 475-7555 for your funeral home's rate.

Advance Family Pay is TOPTIER's program for advancing money to a family beyond the cost of the funeral service, from the same life insurance policy. The funeral home adds an Advance Family Pay amount when it files the claim, so the family has access to more of the policy benefit right away instead of waiting for the insurer.

TOPTIER Connect is TOPTIER Funeral Funding's online platform for funeral homes. It is where a funeral home files claims, uploads documents, signs agreements electronically, follows each claim's status and manages its staff and locations. It runs in the browser, so there is nothing to install.

Yes. One TOPTIER Connect account can manage several funeral home locations, and each location invites its own staff. Every person is an owner, an admin or a member: owners have full access, admins file claims and invite staff, and members can follow the funeral home's claims without changing them.

Yes to both. A claim can list several life insurance policies, and when they are with different insurance companies TOPTIER Connect splits the entry into one claim per insurer automatically.

When another funeral home is owed part of the benefit, part of the claim can be assigned to that funeral home as it is filed.

Every claim in TOPTIER Connect shows where it stands: Unverified when it has just been filed, Need Docs when TOPTIER is waiting on documents, Funding In Progress, and Funded once the money has been paid.

TOPTIER emails the funeral home when a claim needs documents and when it is funded, and TOPTIER Chat sends real-time funding notifications to a phone.

Around the clock, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Call TOPTIER Funeral Funding at (727) 475-7555, email contact@toptierff.com, or message the team from a phone with TOPTIER Chat.

TOPTIER Funeral Funding, LLC is based in Odessa, Florida, and funds claims for funeral homes nationwide. Its mailing address is PO Box 826, Odessa, FL 33556.

Aaron Calloway, its CEO, launched TOPTIER in 2023. In the early 2000s he founded Express Funeral Funding with his father, Steve, and he went on to pioneer non-recourse funeral funding and the first online funding platform built for funeral homes.