Editor’s note: This is part of a series of articles based on panels and presentations during Insurance Journal’s 2020 Insuring Cannabis Summit on Nov. 19.
If there is one big problem in the insuring cannabis space – where issues include property rates, the impact of COVID-19, crime, vaping – it may be capacity.
Carriers and reinsurers are still largely shying away from the cannabis business because it’s still considered illegal in the eyes of the federal government.
“Property capacity, in general, across the broader insurance market, in E&S, has become a little more difficult of late due to a reduction of capacity,” said Norman Ives, a wholesale insurance broker at Worldwide Facilities LLC specializing in custom insurance products and risk management for the cannabis industry. “We’ve seen increases of rates of in the E&S lines anywhere from 15 to 30%, across no loss accounts year over year renewals on a lot of these.”
Ives was moderating a panel at Insurance Journal’s 2020 Insuring Cannabis Summit on Nov. 19 titled State of the Cannabis Insurance Market: It’s Moving, But Where’s It Headed?
The panelists were Erich Bublitz, vice president at Admiral Insurance Group, a Berkley Company, who is responsible for cannabis underwriting, Stephanie Bozzuto, co-founder and president of Cannabis Connect Insurance Services, and Kieran J. O’Rourke,…
