Cannabis insurance is a budding topic, growing alongside the expanding cannabis industry. Five states have approved recreational cannabis during the 2020 elections, bringing the total states where cannabis is fully legal to 15. What does this mean for the cannabis market, particularly for insurers involved with this growing industry?

After evaluating your organizational structure and asking essential questions about the need to establish a more remote workforce, it’s time to think about the big question… How are you going to effectively hire, attract, onboard and keep people in this remote environment? According to Sharon Emek, Ph.D., CIC, and founder and CEO of Work At Home Vintage Experts (WAHVE), once your hiring strategy and recruiting process is in place, you’ll want to turn to applicant selection, interviews, and onboarding.

The COVID-19 pandemic has left profound impacts on businesses worldwide, forcing many organizations to pivot to remote work. COVID-19 has taught companies that good, efficient work can be done from anywhere, and that talent identification shouldn’t be confined to geographic locations. As the pandemic continues, some organizations have struggled with how to hire and onboard top talent remotely.

COVID-19 has caused an abundance of challenges for businesses everywhere. With protective restrictions, unessential businesses were forced to send employees home and, in many cases, shut down due to the threat of the rapidly spreading virus. These businesses deemed "unessential," however, are essential to the livelihoods of many, leaving businesses in a state of panic. How were they to continue business when they couldn't remain open? Many businesses that could feasibly function as a remote workforce have attempted the transition, and as COVID-19's threats persist, many schools have made the decision as well.

In a special edition of the AAIS Webinar Series, CONVR VP Sales and Marketing Phil Alampi presented on the topic of "Artificial Intelligence: Creating Super Underwriters." Mr. Alampi discussed the growing impacts COVID-19 has had on insurers. With more than 75% of carriers seeing increases in business interruption claims, the demand for coverage is expectedly surging. This growing challenge has a positive side, however, for the impacts of COVID-19 have expedited the need for the industry to improve its ability to crunch data better and more efficiently.

In a well-attended edition to the AAIS Webinar Series, BriteCore’s Director of Product Configuration, Tricia Pattee discussed ways in which technology can support product changes, product configuration, rapid product development while giving a competitive edge.

Recently, Dowling and Partners’ Gary Ransom spoke to AAIS CEO and President Ed Kelly during the Virtual Main Event, discussing how COVID-19 will touch nearly every aspect of the insurance ecosystem. The impact is pervasive. In fact, according to Mr. Ransom, the COVID-19 pandemic is on track to become the largest insurance event in history, according to one industry expert.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the insurance industry – and the world – permanently, and one expert believes the industry will respond well to the challenges set forth by this catastrophic event. AAIS’s Nicole Milos spoke with Fred Karlinsky, Co-chair Insurance Regulatory and Transactions Practice at Greenberg Traurig, about his views on the COVID-19 pandemic and the short- and long-term impacts the pandemic could have on the insurance industry.

IBM, who has partnered with AAIS on the development of the openIDL data-management platform on blockchain, has long been a strong proponent of open-source software development. Chris Ferris, an IBM Fellow and CTO for Open Technology at IBM, spoke to AAIS’s Joan Zerkovich on the importance of the open-source concept and the powerful outcomes IBM has seen from building technology in an open environment.

The Internet was built on the concepts of open source, open collaboration, and cooperation. One industry pioneer believes these principles can and should be put into use today for continued success.