It’s your funeral: former academic gives Hongkongers more end-of-life choices

After years of teaching Hongkongers about death and end-of-life arrangements, Dr Ng Kwai-lun realised there was a gap between what people were told they could do and the services actually available to them.

Determined to bridge that gap, he left a stable university career to become an entrepreneur.

Ng had worked at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s medical school, where he managed embalming and helped run and promote its body donation initiative.

But by 2020, the pandemic had exposed another problem.

He encountered elderly people and families with little support when arranging funerals, while restrictions left them with fewer choices. Some, he said, also faced opaque pricing and rigid packages in a highly traditional industry.

Ng subsequently left his university post and established funeral social enterprise Minimal Funeral, seeking to offer transparent prices, simpler arrangements and more choices.

“I wanted to turn what I had been teaching about death and end-of-life planning into real choices that people could actually act on,” he said.

The company was designed to be financially self-sustaining instead of depending indefinitely on grants. It began with Ng and his wife and has since grown to about 15 staff members.

Ng is a finalist for the Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award in this year’s Spirit of Hong Kong Awards, co-organised by Sino Group and the South China Morning Post.

Giving families more choices remains an important part of the business model. Families can see funeral venues, floral arrangements and other options on screen before deciding what they want, while simpler and greener arrangements are also offered.

Ng said he did not want to discard traditional funeral customs, but to give families alternatives at a time when grief can make decisions particularly difficult.

That social role was put into action after the deadly Wang Fuk Court fire in Tai Po last November, which killed 168 people and displaced nearly 5,000 residents.

Ng said his team provided free funeral services, body restoration and grief counselling, as well as support for residents returning to their homes after the fire.

Some work restoring personal belongings retrieved from the flats was still continuing at the time he was interviewed earlier this month.

Ng said the response showed how resources across his different services could be directed towards a community emergency.

The social mission also continues in the company’s regular work.

Ng said about a third of the more than 300 funeral cases handled annually were for lower-income families or people with limited family support.

His work has since expanded from funerals into earlier stages of ageing and end-of-life planning.

A separate death education service offers advice to different age groups, while another of his social enterprises helps people make arrangements covering wills, advance medical planning and funeral wishes.

The expansion responds partly to demographic change, he explained. Someone retiring at 60 and living to 90 could spend three decades in retirement, making advance planning increasingly relevant as more older people live alone or apart from their children.

Ng describes the three social enterprises as an interconnected system dealing with different stages of later life, from education and planning to end-of-life care, funeral arrangements and grief support.

A fourth venture focusing on trusts and care planning is currently in development.

Ng said the service would particularly target middle-income older people living alone and families with disabled dependants, making forms of planning traditionally associated with wealthier families available to more people.

His greatest satisfaction, he said, comes from seeing ideas discussed in lectures turned into services that people can benefit from.

“Before, I could explain things such as advance medical planning, funeral wishes and end-of-life arrangements, but people might still struggle to act on them.

“Now, we can help turn those choices into actual services and plans,” he said.

Launched in 2013, the Spirit of Hong Kong Awards recognise society’s unsung heroes and organisations whose work might escape public attention.