Interview with Wiliam C. Wappner,
the President of FIAT-IFTA

magyartemetkezes.hu (Hungarian Funeral Magazine) interviewed Mr. Wiliam C. Wappner, President of FIAT-IFTA, about the biggest challenges for the industry globally. You can read full interview in Hungarian in printed version of magazine
and in English below.

As a leader who has been in the industry for a long time, what do you see as the biggest challenge for the industry globally?

I see several major challenges. One is making the funeral service itself relevant. The National Funeral Directors Association in the United States did its first ever global survey. It showed in North America only 65.7% and Europe only 70.21% of the people thought that the funeral service was important. In Africa and Central America, it was just over 90%. That could be due to culture, but it is a big difference. Globally, only 69.3% of the people felt that funeral professionals took special care to make the ceremony reflect the wishes of the family, and 72.5% thought the services were valuable.

I think these last numbers are low, and it will be a challenge moving forward getting funeral professionals to be more creative in providing more meaningful services to their families.

The other challenge is finding good young people to enter the profession.

From your perspective, what are the biggest differences between European and US funeral culture and the funeral industry?

I think European and US funeral culture is very similar, and the survey showed that consumer attitudes in these regions were also very similar. The biggest difference I find is in the burial or cemetery custom. In the US people buy their burial plot for perpetuity while in several European countries it is rented or used for a period and the family needs to pay an additional fee to renew.

Another difference is funeral homes in the US seem to be larger and more services are conducted in them. Many funeral homes have reception centers to provide meals after the service as well. We have what we call a Life Celebration Reception Center. We have held many memorial services where food is an important part of the celebration. It is better suited to families that don’t want a traditional service but want a celebration of life just the same.

You have recently been elected president of the organization. What would you highlight as the main areas you would like to focus? What would you like to achieve by the end of your term and what would you be satisfied with at the end of your term?

At our meeting in Krakow, Poland we added several new committees. We have had the Heritage Committee for some time, and its Chair, Cheng Yuanyuan, has done an excellent job with it. In addition, we have the Global Education Committee, Embalming Committee, the Coffin Standards Committee, and the Sustainability Committee. I would like to see all these committees up and running at a high level. All these committees will benefit the members of FIAT-IFTA and the repatriation of their clients. The committee that has had a tremendous interest is the Embalming Committee. There are so many levels of embalming care that having FIAT-IFTA defining the standards might eliminate confusion in expectations between funeral providers.

Regardless of which country we are talking about, there is a certain taboo around the funeral profession. What can be done to lift this?

I believe the taboo around the funeral profession is greater in some countries depending on the culture and also how the profession may be portrayed on television or in movies in certain countries. The best way to overcome it is to be active in the community and let people get to know you. It is also the best way to grow your business. The big challenge, again, is to get young people to consider funeral service as a career and not have the opinion it is a

taboo type of profession. Our Ohio licensing board, which I am a member of, interviews everyone getting either a funeral director’s or embalmer’s license. I always ask the apprentice what got them to consider a career in funeral service. It is usually an experience they had sometime in their life at a relative’s funeral. Our profession also needs to participate in job fairs at the regular public education level.

Digital solutions and AI applications are increasingly part of our lives. How common do you think they can become in a more conservative industry like the funeral profession?

In our profession I don’t think AI will replace a caring funeral director. Death will always require a human touch to comfort the soul. I do think AI can make funeral professionals more efficient. It could definitely help with doing any required paperwork or help with scheduling. AI can be tried right now in funeral service. Have you ever tried using Chat GPT to write an obituary. I can see this in funeral software that once the information is inputted AI writes the obituary not in a set format but a lot more like a human would.