By Thomas A. Parmalee
For decades, funeral directors have navigated a delicate tension: helping families create meaningful tributes while confronting the hard limits of immediate liquidity.
Credit cards, insurance assignments and informal payment plans have long served as imperfect tools — often placing the funeral home in the uncomfortable position of acting as both caregiver and creditor.
What Family Shield Credit proposes is a structural shift in that equation.
Family Shield was developed by funeral professionals who encountered the same friction points as their peers but decided to build a solution tailored to funeral service.
“We had families coming in and asking a simple question: ‘Do you offer monthly payments?’” said Daniel Solecki Sr., chief operating officer of Givnish Family Life Celebration Homes and co-founder and president of Family Shield. “And the reality was, there really wasn’t anything out there that worked for funeral homes the way we needed it to.”
Built by Funeral Directors
The origin story is instructive.
Solecki — alongside his son, Danny; and John Givnish, president at Givnish Family Life Celebration Homes, which has 15 locations in the Northeast and serves about 2,500 families per year — initially approached traditional banks with the concept of structured funeral financing. The response was consistent: enthusiasm without execution.
“We approached them never thinking we’d be the ones to develop a solution,” Givnish said. “Every banker said, ‘What a great idea … we’ll get back to you.’ But no one ever got back to me.”
Fortunately, they connected with Dan Krewson, a longtime bank executive who they’ve worked with for 15 years, to talk through their idea.
“He’s been the banker for the Givnish organization for 15 years,” Solecki said. “As he has moved from bank to bank, we have followed him.”
Krewson formerly worked at Huntingdon Valley Bank, a Pennsylvania-based community bank, where he worked with Hugh Connelly, a senior bank executive.
“Hugh came from a consumer lending background, and when we had a conversation and our desire to come up with a desire for a consumer lending product, Hugh saw the fit, and we developed the concept.”
Family Shield Credit, often shortened to “Family Shield,” was originally formed as an informal arrangement between Huntingdon Valley Bank and Givnish Family Funeral Homes.
“Leaders of both companies saw an opportunity to develop a digitally based consumer lending product specifically tailored to the funeral industry,” the company stated “The loan product would be designed by funeral directors for funeral directors. Since we issued our first loan in February 2022, we have strived to never forget that first and foremost we are providing a service to families in a period of great need.”
After being operated inside of the bank for a few years, in November 2023 a new independent company was formed as Family Shield Capital, LLC doing business as Family Shield Credit. The principals maintained the same levels of compliance, oversight, and controls while under the bank, continuing to still be overseen by the Pennsylvania Department of Banking, but as an independent company that could quickly adapt to the needs of the funeral profession. All loans originate on a proprietary platform.
Family Shield’s core competitive advantages are its merging of funeral industry expertise and banking and lending expertise combined with a digital platform that can quickly offer consumers quality loan products at competitive rates.
“FSC has a single product: an unsecured fully amortizing term loan issued to consumers for the sole purpose of financing funeral related expenses,” the company stated. “All loans are originated digitally, priced competitively according to a risk-based matrix, and are focused on prime / prime+ credit quality, keeping borrowing costs low benefiting our end customers.”
Crucially, the company is not positioned as a lender of last resort. Instead, it operates as a “premium offering,” targeting consumers with credit scores of roughly 650 or higher — representing an estimated 75% of the U.S. population.
The founders of the company are Givnish, Solecki Sr., Krewson and Connelly, with Givnish serving as chairman, Solecki Sr. serving as president, and Krewson serving as executive vice president. Rounding out the team is Solecki Jr, who serves as director of business process and development; and Mac Trivedi, director of capital markets.
Minimum loan amounts begin at $2,500, with repayment terms typically spanning 36 or 60 months. Interest rates generally fall between 13% and 18%, often undercutting standard credit card annual percentage rates. There are no prepayment penalties, and families can structure financing collaboratively — up to three individuals can share responsibility for a single service.
That means three siblings can each take out a loan for $5,000 to pay for a $15,000 funeral. In theory, members of a single family could band together and be approved for $75,000 in spending.
“This wasn’t designed for someone who has no options,” Solecki emphasized. “It was designed to give families flexibility — and to give funeral homes a way to offer that flexibility without taking on financial risk.”
A Cash Flow Solution that Offers Families Options
For funeral homes that offer Family Shield, the impact can be immediate.
Funeral homes are paid directly, often within 48 hours, once the loan is finalized and documentation is complete. There is no fee deducted from the funeral home’s proceeds, and no recourse if a borrower defaults.
That last point is critical.
“What it has done for us is eliminate almost all of our accounts receivable,” said Givnish, president and co-founder of Family Shield, who rolled out the option at his funeral homes just over four years ago. “We went from having close to 12% of our revenue out on the street to about 2%. And we’re getting paid much more quickly.”
In a profession where cash flow variability can strain operations, such a shift fundamentally changes the revenue cycle.
Equally important is the removal of the funeral home from the role of lender. The familiar scenarios, such as requests to “wait until the house sells” or having families plead for informal installment agreements, are largely eliminated.
If a family qualifies, the transaction is clean. If they do not, the conversation resets without lingering financial ambiguity, Givnish said.
Watching how the solution has opened options for families has been deeply moving, Givnish said.
“Our profession has been limiting our customers and families on how to honor loved ones,” he said. “They have been limited to how liquid they are at the time of a loved one’s death.”
The result has been families telling the funeral home that they only have a $5,000 budget, and as a result, the funeral home has crafted a $5,000 service.
“But when you offer an additional payment option, they start to open up and speak about what they truly desire for their loved ones,” Givnish said.
He noted that Family Shield has even allowed his funeral homes to grow market share, and families can plan a funeral knowing they can pay as little as $195 per month with a loan to give their loved one the funeral they deserve. Funeral homes can include the option with various packages, which have worked extremely well at Givnish Funeral Homes.
Loans can be used to pay for anything funeral related, whether it is an urn, flowers, catering or some other type of product or service, Solecki said.
Expanding the Conversation, Not the Invoice
While the operational benefits are clear, the more nuanced impact may lie in how families make decisions.
“When we launched this, we thought it was just about offering payment plans,” Solecki said. “What we learned very quickly is that consumers value time.”
Roughly 30% of loans are paid off within 90 days, suggesting that many families are not financing out of necessity but out of convenience. Their goal is to get through a short period to bridge a gap when there is a mismatch between expenses and available funds that may come from insurance payouts or asset liquidation.
More telling is how the availability of financing influences purchasing behavior.
According to Givnish, when Family Shield is introduced early in the arrangement conference, families tend to spend more, often by $4,000 to $5,000.
“The mistake a lot of funeral homes make is waiting until the end to talk about payment,” Givnish said. “By then, the decisions have already been made based on what they think they can afford today.”
Introducing monthly payment options upfront reframes the conversation from “What can you pay right now?” to “What do you want this service to be?” Givnish said.
That distinction matters.
“For years, we’ve been limiting families based on their immediate liquidity,” Solecki added. “Credit card limits, insurance face value — those became the ceiling. What this does is remove that ceiling and allow families to talk about what they truly want.”
Importantly, both executives are quick to note that the intent is not to maximize revenue at all costs.
“This was never designed to extract every possible dollar,” Solecki said. “It’s about affordability and access.”
Operational Integration and Transparency
From a workflow standpoint, the platform is intentionally streamlined. Families complete a brief online application with five questions. They receive a decision within hours. Upon approval, they are presented with multiple term options and complete documentation via e-signature.
A distinguishing feature is the dual-notification system: Both the family and the funeral home are informed simultaneously of approval status. Funeral homes also have access to a dedicated portal to monitor applications in real time.
“We built this, so the funeral director is never in the dark,” Solecki said. “If a family tells you they applied, you know exactly where that stands.”
The model also avoids a common concern in consumer finance: data monetization.
“We do not sell consumer information,” Solecki noted.
A Different Kind of Risk Profile
Despite operating in the unsecured lending space, Family Shield reports a loss rate below 1%, which is well below the typical 4% to 5% range for comparable consumer credit portfolios.
While part of that performance is attributable to credit standards, Solecki points to behavioral dynamics unique to funeral service.
“There’s a different level of accountability,” he said. “This isn’t a discretionary purchase. There’s a sense of obligation — almost a social collateral — that influences repayment.”
Additionally, because applications are initiated through the funeral home rather than directly by consumers, the process carries an implicit level of seriousness that may not exist in other lending contexts.
Scaling a Profession-Driven Model
After a measured rollout over the past four years, Family Shield is now active in roughly 800 funeral homes, with ambitions to scale significantly. A recent partnership with Tribute Technology positions the platform for broader adoption.
“Family Shield represents exactly the kind of innovation our profession needs right now —solutions that reduce friction for families while strengthening the operational health of funeral homes,” said Craig Greenseid, chief executive officer of Tribute Technology. “By giving families more flexible ways to pay, we’re not just solving a financial challenge; we’re helping ensure that decisions are guided by meaning and memory, not immediate limitations. That ultimately leads to better experiences for families and more sustainable businesses for the funeral homes that serve them.”
Family Shield also has a strategic partnership with Treasured Memories, which has 282 members operating out of 900 locations in 23 states. The firm is led by founder Jimmy Altmeyer Jr., a fourth-generation funeral director who is also the president of Altmeyer Funeral Homes & Crematory, which now operates more than 50 firms.
In a video highlighting the benefits of Family Shield, Altmeyer notes that Treasured Memories has seen a substantial increase in families using Family Shield to purchase the services they desire.
The onboarding process is designed to be lightweight, with marketing collateral and pricing integration provided at no cost to the funeral home. In some states, a modest underwriting fee (capped around 3.5%) may be applied to the loan and amortized over its term.
For Solecki and Givnish, the long-term vision is less about market share and more about providing a service families want.
“We felt this profession needed a real option,” Solecki said. “An option that works for families and protects the funeral home.”
So far, their instincts have been on target: Family Shield is loaning about $350,000 per month to finance funerals, with the average loan being about $9,000. About 800 funeral homes are using the solution.
The Family Shield team stands ready to offer the service to funeral homes nationwide. They anticipate being able to accommodate most states.
Meeting the Expectations of a New Decision-Maker
One final data point underscores the broader shift underway: the average Family Shield borrower is around 50 years old.
Givnish and Solecki note it’s often the adult child making arrangements for a parent. These are customers who are accustomed to financing large purchases, and they place a premium on digital convenience and flexibility.
“As a profession, we have to connect with the person actually making the decision,” Solecki said. “And that person increasingly expects options like this.”
In that context, Family Shield is more than a financing tool. It is an indicator that shows how funeral service can evolve to meet modern consumer expectations without compromising its core mission.
Or, as Givnish put it: “If we can remove financial stress from the process, even just a little, we’re doing our job better.”
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