“Really when it comes to cultivation, processing, there is a bit of a hiccup, it seems in the overall market space, I think in terms of capacity from a property perspective for a total package solution,” said Keith Distel, casualty team leader in Admiral’s Chicago office and vice president of cannabis underwriting.
Distel’s comment on capacity was in answer to a question from moderator Charles Pyfrom, chief marketing officer at CannGen Insurance Services.
“And so on the general liability side, what I see, especially a huge pain point, as operators grow by leaps and bounds every single year.
“When you look at these deals, obviously, you’ve got a private company doing a reverse merger into a SPAC and a lot of times it’s either ancillary businesses in and around the cannabis space, which if you follow some stocks, those are the SPAC deals that have done better historically than the traditional vertically integrated operators who have gone public via a SPAC vehicle,” Devey said.
“And we’re having issues with certain placements when it comes to equipment breakdown.
“That shock factor is real, even though cannabis has been more than a decade strong, continue to be a force in the industry of an up and coming boom, where it’s attracting great operators and great executives from other industries to come over and say, I want to be part of this entrepreneurial venture that is cannabis, that’s doing a gazillion dollars in sales every year now.
But uninsured EPLI claims, wage and hour, or other related issues, I’ve seen a number of those coming through, and thus far, unfortunately, all of them have been uninsured, as the take up on EPLI is still incredibly low.