Video Staff
This interview was taped at the Accelerate Cannabis event in Newark, NJ.
Debra Borchardt, Editor-in-Chief, GMR
If you don’t know AON, AON plc (NYSE: AON) is a really mainstream professional services firm and insurance company, but now they’ve gotten in cannabis. What is it that brought AON to step over into cannabis?
James Jackson, Aon Insurance
I think the main thing in the cannabis space is it has to be recognized as one of the fastest growing sectors in business, period. AON being one of the larger, I guess, brokers in the global market, we’re on the forefront of life science as we’re on the forefront of manufacturing. We’re on the forefront of technology. Just recognizing, I guess, a fast growing industry like cannabis itself and creating its own sector makes enough sense for AON to be able to jump in the game and insure and help insure and transfer the risk of a lot these cannabis companies.
GMR
What exactly are you doing for cannabis companies?
James Jackson
We’re doing a lot of the same coverages that you would do for any normal company. We’re doing general liability. We’re doing product liability. Specifically, that’s one of the things that is more unique in the cannabis space is that to be able to find the coverages that are going to cover your product once it’s complete, whether it be flour, whether it be concentrate, or edibles itself. Another specific thing we’re doing is we’re doing a lot of the D&O insurance for private and public. We’re doing specifically pre-IPO work for a lot of the teams that we see going public in Canada. There’s a number of ways. We’re pretty much able to help cannabis companies all the way from seed to sale and everything in between.
GMR
What about IP? Because IP sounds like it’s becoming the new thing that everybody is concerned about.
James Jackson
I guess when you talk about intellectual property, it’s a different conversation than the cannabis game. Right? Where it’s like what is the intellectual property within the cannabis industry and what we’re seeing a lot is actual plants or actually the process that folks are taking to either cure or to finish their cultivation process. A number of the different things that I guess you can differentiate as unique to one group or another are the things that we’re able to help as far as IP.
GMR
Really interesting that we’re starting to see more of these mainstream companies jump into cannabis. Thank you so much.
