By Thomas A. Parmalee
When someone walks into a funeral home to preplan, the funeral director will help them answer important questions, such as: What kind of funeral do you want? Burial or cremation? Where should your services take place? How do you want to pay for them?
Preplanning eases the burden for family members, who won’t have to worry about making arrangements at the time of death. But that doesn’t mean they won’t find themselves asking:
- What bank accounts exist?
- Is there a safe-deposit box?
- Where are the important documents?
- Who is the family’s attorney and accountant?
- What property does the person own?
And so on.
There is also what might be the most important question of all — one that sometimes goes unanswered even when someone prearranges their funeral: What stories, memories, advice and messages should be passed on to loved ones?
That gap between planning a funeral and leaving a legacy is one of the problems Farah Baxter hopes to solve with Soalma, a digital legacy-planning platform that Baxter co-founded after losing an extended family member.
The company launched in 2023: Its name is a combination of the word “soul” in English and in Spanish, which is “alma.”
For Baxter, even though her loved one left a will and family members got along, settling affairs proved unexpectedly difficult.
“It was a disaster,” Baxter said, noting that it was hard to track down bank accounts, insurance paperwork and important documents.
She quickly learned that others have faced a similar experience. She has even heard of families giving up on insurance claims simply because it was so difficult to find the documentation they needed to get the process going.
“You can fight and push to get it,” Baxter said. “But at the hardest point of someone’s life, where is the life insurance? Where are the documents? What investments do they have? Where do they have bank accounts? Do they have a safe-deposit box no one knows about? How do you get in touch with the lawyer and accountant?”
Those questions led Baxter to a realization: There are plenty of wills, trusts, insurance policies and funeral plans, but what is often missing is a practical system for organizing all the information families need when someone dies.
Her co-founder, Ignacio Moreno (pictured with her at the top of this article), who she met by happenstance at an alumni event, serves as Soalma’s CEO, with her serving as chief operating officer.
Moreno had encountered a different version of the same problem. His concern was the emotional side of legacy — preserving family history, memories, advice and personal messages that otherwise could disappear with the death of a loved one.
Soalma was created to bring those two pieces together.
“The practical and the emotional,” Baxter said.
That proposition could be particularly interesting to funeral directors because Baxter does not see Soalma as a replacement for funeral-home planning. She sees it as a way for funeral homes to expand what they offer families before someone dies.
The Next Conversation in Preneed
One of the clearest trends Baxter has observed in talking with funeral directors is the growth of preneed planning.
But she believes funeral homes have an opportunity to take the conversation considerably further.
A funeral director may complete a preneed arrangement and then give the family a checklist or brochure explaining other things they should do.
“That’s a good start to plant the seed, but it is not solving the problem,” Baxter said.
She has an analogy for what she sees happening.
“It’s like saying you should bake a cake for your birthday but not giving them the recipe or ingredients or tools to do it,” she said.
Soalma is intended to provide those tools.
The platform allows consumers to organize practical information and documents while also creating an emotional legacy containing memories, stories, messages and other information they want to preserve for their families. The company says users can organize information that may be important to loved ones and control how and when certain information is shared.
For a funeral home, Baxter sees several potential ways to introduce the platform.
One could be straightforward: A funeral home selling a preneed arrangement could include a one-year Soalma subscription as part of the package. After that, the family could pay directly to continue using the platform.
“That also works for estate attorneys,” Baxter said.
Financial advisers could take a similar approach, potentially including the service for their clients. And organizations that cannot purchase subscriptions in bulk because of compliance, size or budget considerations could participate through affiliate arrangements, with Soalma providing marketing materials, education and customer discounts.
The company is intentionally keeping its business model flexible because Baxter recognizes that a large financial institution, an independent funeral home and an estate attorney will have very different needs.
“We understand none are exactly the same,” she said. “We want to understand motivations, budgets and limitations.”
A Way to Stay Connected
For funeral directors, perhaps the most interesting part of the Soalma proposition is what happens after the initial preneed conversation.
A family might sit down with a funeral director today, make a plan and pay for it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they have completed the much larger process of preparing for death.
Baxter sees Soalma as another reason for the funeral home to remain connected with that family.
“They might have to think about prefunding the funeral,” she said, noting that inviting them to use Soalma or providing them with a subscription can be a way to stay in touch and preserve the connection.
Even when a family funds a prearrangement, the funeral home could introduce Soalma as another step in the family’s planning process rather than simply handing over a checklist of things to do, she said.
Baxter also sees opportunities for co-branding. Soalma can provide marketing materials that funeral homes can use with their own branding, giving funeral directors another way to incorporate the service into their existing preneed programs.
The larger idea is to change the nature of the preneed conversation.
Instead of asking only, “Have you planned your funeral?” the funeral director can ask, “Have you thought through everything your family will need when you’re gone?”
That is a much broader conversation.
And Baxter believes it’s a talk that consumers are increasingly willing to have.
Pricing
Soalma offers a tiered pricing model designed to make its legacy-planning platform accessible to individuals while also creating an opportunity for businesses to incorporate the service into their offerings.
The Starter Plan is free and includes practical planning templates, basic emotional legacy functionality and support for up to 10 contacts. Individuals who initially opt for a free account often convert into paid subscribers once they become familiar with the platform and learn about the additional features they can unlock, Baxter said.
The Premium Plan costs approximately $8 per month when billed annually and adds document uploads, advanced sharing features, expanded emotional legacy functionality, unlimited contacts and access to new features and updates. Premium users receive up to 25GB of storage, compared with 500MB for the free plan.
For businesses, including those that could incorporate Soalma into funeral-related services, the company offers customized Business Plans rather than publishing a fixed price.
Soalma says businesses can bundle the platform into client services, use it to create new revenue streams or offer it as an employee benefit. The company invites prospective business customers to schedule a free consultation to develop a personalized plan.
The Funeral Home’s Role
There is an important caveat to the Soalma proposition: Baxter isn’t suggesting funeral directors become financial planners, estate attorneys or technology consultants.
Soalma does not provide legal, medical or financial advice, she said, and it does not tell consumers how to transfer assets. It is essentially a centralized repository for the information and materials a person wants to organize and eventually pass along.
That distinction could be important for funeral directors considering whether to introduce the platform to their families.
The funeral home remains the trusted professional helping the family navigate deathcare. Soalma becomes another tool in that relationship.
However, some families still want human guidance, which is why Soalma is piloting a legacy-coaching program that would supplement its self-service platform with one-on-one assistance.
Instead of simply giving a family a link and saying, “Have at it,” Baxter envisions a more guided experience in which someone learns about the individual’s goals, motivations, timeline, risks and limitations and helps create a customized plan.
For funeral homes, Baxter sees an obvious connection.
“As you are speaking to individuals, you can say, ‘Have you made your plan for the funeral? Here is something more you can do,’” she said.
Thinking Beyond Funeral Homes
Funeral homes are only one part of Soalma’s strategy.
The company is also talking with financial advisers, insurance companies, estate attorneys and organizations serving older adults, including senior living, home care, assisted living, independent living and senior relocation companies.
Baxter also sees potential among high-risk professions such as police and fire departments, where life insurance and advance planning can be particularly relevant.
The company is taking an international approach as well. Soalma is available in English and Spanish, Baxter said, with her co-founder focusing on Spain and Latin American markets while she concentrates primarily on the United States.
That could also make the platform relevant to U.S. families with relatives or assets in other countries.
But Baxter says the company is deliberately avoiding the temptation to build technology simply because technology can be built.
“The more funeral homes get on board and the more feedback we get, we could consider building a back end for funeral advisers and financial advisers,” she said.
Consumers May Be Ready for the Conversation
Soalma has evolved considerably since Baxter began working on the concept.
The original product focused on the emotional side of legacy planning. Market testing showed that people liked the idea of preserving memories and messages, but there was a practical problem.
“People continued saying, ‘Beautiful,’ but they said, ‘Yes, I would do the practical first,’” Baxter said.
Soalma eventually combined the two sides, and Baxter said the company began seeing traction after the practical and emotional components were brought together in 2025.
“It’s still early days,” Baxter said, but the nature of conversations with prospective business partners has changed noticeably in recent months, she said.
Three or four months ago, she said, conversations began getting easier as more people encountered the broader concept of legacy planning in the media and in their personal lives.
“For me, sales calls are becoming easier,” she said.
That could prove important for the deathcare profession.
Funeral directors have long understood that families often don’t want to think about death until they need to do so — and legacy planning gives them another way to pursue a conversation. It can begin with family history, organization, financial preparedness or simply making life easier for one’s children.
Baxter’s own experience illustrates why.
Her family wasn’t fighting over an estate. There wasn’t a lack of love or goodwill. There was simply a lack of information.
And that can be enough to create chaos.
An Opportunity to Broaden Preneed
The opportunity Baxter sees for funeral homes ultimately comes down to one word: comprehensive.
A funeral director who helps a family prearrange a funeral is already doing something most consumers will never do on their own. They are helping someone confront an uncomfortable subject, make decisions and put those decisions into place.
Soalma’s proposition is that the process doesn’t have to stop there.
“It’s really a great way to help people plan in advance,” Baxter said, “and then also really making sure the services are comprehensive.”
Whether funeral homes ultimately embrace Soalma as a bundled preneed benefit, an optional resource, an affiliate offering or something else remains to be seen.
The company is still working that out.
But the underlying business question is one funeral directors should pay attention to: What does a funeral home sell when it sells preneed?
If the answer is simply a funeral, the opportunity is relatively limited.
If the answer is preparation — helping families organize everything they will need when death occurs — the potential relationship becomes considerably broader.
That is the space Soalma wants to occupy.
And if Baxter is right that consumers are becoming more receptive to having practical conversations about death and legacy before a crisis occurs, funeral homes may have an opportunity to become part of that conversation earlier.
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