Commercial Crime Insurance

Report it immediately, because crime policies run on discovery rather than on when the loss happened. Tell us as soon as you suspect it, before the internal investigation is finished. File a police report, preserve the records, bank statements, and email trail, and involve your bank within its own deadlines, which are often measured in days for a fraudulent transfer. Do not confront an employee before you have secured the records. A long-running theft can be covered even when it began under an earlier policy, provided the discovery conditions are met.

Often not under the agreements businesses assume cover it. Computer fraud generally requires an unauthorised entry into your system, and funds transfer fraud generally requires a transfer instruction your bank acted on without your knowledge. A convincing email that persuades your own employee to authorise a payment fits neither, because the transfer was authorised. That gap is filled by a social engineering or fraudulent instruction agreement, usually with a sublimit well below the policy limit and a callback verification condition attached. Ask which of the three you hold.

A crime policy is a menu, not a single coverage. The common agreements are employee theft, forgery or alteration of your instruments, and theft of money and securities inside the premises. Then the same outside the premises or in transit, computer fraud, funds transfer fraud, and money orders and counterfeit currency. Social engineering, meaning a payment you were deceived into authorising, is usually its own agreement with a lower sublimit. Each carries its own limit and deductible, and an agreement you did not buy simply is not there.

One is, and it catches employers by surprise. Federal law requires that every person who handles funds or other property of an employee benefit plan be bonded. Under ERISA section 412 the bond must be at least 10 percent of the funds handled, with a minimum of $1,000 and a maximum of $500,000, rising to $1,000,000 for a plan holding employer securities. That is a fidelity bond, not a surety bond and not a licence bond. Beyond that, contracts and landlords drive most crime requirements. Current as of August 2026.

Losses you cannot document, and losses that belong to another policy. Property damage and bodily injury are elsewhere, and a data breach is cyber. Inventory shortages proven only by a physical count are commonly excluded, since a discrepancy is not the same as a theft. Loss discovered long after an employee left may fall outside the discovery period. Above all, a crime policy pays only on the insuring agreements you actually bought, so the schedule is what decides the answer rather than the policy title.