Understanding Your Risk
Video Transcript
Larry Harb:
This is a list that I put up here that says, “Every cannabis business should or at least needs to consider”—okay? Again, the general liability and the products liability are the only two that the state mandates that you have. But everything else is optional. Everything else is a business decision, and everything else covers a specific area of exposure. For example, if you own a building, then you’ve gotta have property coverage. If you have business personal property, you need to have property coverage. I said, you have an exposure because workers get hurt. If your workers get hurt, it’s in a worker’s compensation policy and, oh, by the way, all 50 states say, if you’re a business operating in our state, you need to have worker’s compensation to insure your workers. Okay? And, don’t get hung up with, well, I have 1099 employees. States don’t care. If your worker gets hurt, what you call them for tax purposes is not an issue. It’s, what do they really do, so you need the worker’s comp.
Commercial auto. Depending on what business you’re in—needless to say, if you’re in the transportation business, well, commercial auto becomes really, really important to you. Okay? Database or cyber liability. I put this up here because we cover the loss of personal and private information in a database or cyber liability policy, okay? And we also cover the loss of personal health information in that same policy. We also cover a whole lot of other things, but the big question I have for this one is, would you ever wanna turn a claim in because it becomes a federal offense. Now, if it’s a federal offense, are you gonna wanna bring the feds into your business, and you see where I’m going with that one. It gets real messy. But the coverage is out there, okay? The coverage is definitely out there.
Commercial crime. This is when your employees are thieves. And that’s where that cover is, is in a commercial crime policy. Employment practices liability coverage. I don’t mean to offend anybody, but we all know about this #MeToo thing that’s going on. Okay? If you get a #MeToo issue in your organization, here’s where it’s covered, is under an employment practices. This is coverage for if your employee sues you because you’ve done sexual harassment, you’ve done employee discrimination. Whatever harm you’ve caused to your employees is in an EPL policy.
Health and disability insurance. I recommend that every business have health insurance for their employees. Now, again, we all know the problem with health insurance in this country today and Obamacare, or whatever you wanna call it, but it becomes important. And the truth of the matter is, disability insurance is important. Statistically, 25% of employees become disabled, so disability insurance becomes important.
And, last but not least, is life insurance. Why do we all need life insurance? One thing is for financial planning, but the other side of it is, if you’re gonna have business partners, you might wanna have what’s called a key person—or, used to be called a key man, now we call it a key person policy—and what does that do? That gives the business the ability to buy out people if somebody dies. Okay? Very important transfer because, I love my business partner, but I may not like my business partner’s spouse. Now, think about that, okay? It’s fun to be in business with your business partner, but would you wanna be in business with their spouse. This is the way you get the spouse out of it. Okay? Just something to keep in mind.