Next Wave Insurance Canada : Everything you need to know

Next Wave Insurance Canada: Everything you need to know
Offices: Three (San Diego, Rancho Cordova, CA, and Toronto, ON)
Business: Managing general underwriter
Experience in cannabis insurance: 10+

Next Wave Insurance Canada is a subsidiary of California-based Next Wave Insurance Services, and was launched to offer insurance solutions to the cannabis and hemp industry. Next Wave is a managing general underwriter, and its Canadian operations are headquartered in Toronto. The US team has over a decade of experience in cannabis insurance – in fact, the company took part in the development of the first-ever cannabis insurance policies.

The MGU works with independent insurance agents and brokers to service the cannabis and hemp industry with a variety of commercial insurance products. The team also trains registered producers on this emerging marketplace.

Next Wave continues to develop new lines of coverage to provide producers and policyholders with comprehensive seed-to-sale insurance for their business needs. Current coverages from Next Wave include general liability, commercial property, stock, products liability, product recall, and builders risk.

Next Wave in the news
January 2017: Major pot insurer coming to Canada
August 2017: Cannabis legalization: Risks we need to talk about
January 2019: For insurers, recreational cannabis market is a “moving target right now”

September 2019: Difficult market for the cannabis industry is challenging all in insurance

Key people as of 2019
Kelli Hunt – Senior commercial underwriter and VP of cannabis insurance
Hunt is an insurance industry veteran who has served for 15 years as an underwriter at several insurance companies, including JLT Canada and APRIL Assurances. Her experience working on complex commercial risks together with her passion for the cannabis industry led her to her current position at Next Wave Canada. Her role as vice president of cannabis insurance is to provide effective risk transfer solutions for this emerging marketplace.

Culture
Keeping agents and brokers in the loop on developments in the cannabis insurance space is top of mind for the Next Wave team, especially as the Canadian market continues to evolve.

Next Wave took part in the Cannabis Cover event in Toronto in 2019, coming in ready to answer any and all questions that brokers might have around insuring cannabis companies.

“What Cannabis Cover should be doing is educating people,” said Hunt. “This is the day for them to come out and ask the questions that they might not get clarity on from the underwriters right now because we’re all so busy.

“It’s going to be a bit of a free-for-all, but I think it’s going to be very important for everyone, and I think everybody’s going to take something away from it.”