Funeral director completes ‘last piece of the puzzle’ with counterpart acquisition
Family-run funeral director A.W. Lymn has acquired Serene Funeral Planning, bringing all aspects of the funeral arrangement process under one roof for the first time in its 117-year history.
Serene Funeral Planning, now part of A.W. Lymn’s parent company LR Bereavement Holdings, brings an FCA-regulated service into the business, allowing A.W. Lymn to offer a broader range of funeral-related services under one provider.
Operating 25 funeral homes across Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Leicestershire, A.W. Lymn has gradually expanded its services to include stonemasonry, floristry, luxury vehicle hire, and plans to open a cemetery and barrows site in Calverton.
The recent acquisition of Serene Funeral Planning enables the company to offer pre-paid funeral planning directly to its clients, a move they have described as the “last piece of the puzzle.”
James Myers, a chartered accountant with the company, will lead Serene as part of his first directorship.
Myers said: “We have spent a long time carefully considering how to enter the pre-paid funeral plan market and when we were presented with the opportunity of acquiring this well-established and well-run business, we knew early on after meeting the owners of Serene that it would be the perfect fit for our customers. Pre-paid funeral planning is a highly regulated industry with an extremely high bar to pass in order to become FCA accredited. It is no mean feat to achieve this, and we were so impressed with how Angela had diligently and methodically built the business to attain this high standard.
“Bringing pre-paid funeral planning into the A.W. Lymn group is part of our overarching strategy to create a funeral planning system which puts our customers at the very centre of our operations. Our customers come to us for a caring, supportive and – most importantly – trustworthy service and so it has always been our ambition to bring an established funeral planning offering into our selection of services, to complete the circle of in-house funeral options and ensure our customers have the simplest and most reassuring experience when they choose A.W. Lymn.”
He joins the senior management team alongside director Chloe Lymn Rose and Serene’s founder, Angela Young, who continues as compliance director.
Non-executive director Suzanna Walker also joins the board, bringing over 25 years of regulatory and compliance experience.
Angela Young, founder of Serene said: “When establishing Serene, my primary goal was to provide a personalised service where clients felt valued and supported. A.W. Lymn has a well-established reputation within the funeral industry, and it has been a pleasure working with Chloe and James, who share the same commitment to excellence in funeral planning.”
