Does inland marine cover employee theft of tools in Georgia?

Inland marine insurance does not cover employee theft by default. Most inland marine floaters written for contractor tools and equipment contain an exclusion for theft, disappearance, or dishonest acts committed by the policyholder's own employees. The coverage is built to respond to loss from external causes - theft by a third party, fire, weather, accidental damage in transit - not internal dishonesty.

That gap exists because insurers treat employee dishonesty as a distinct risk category, priced and underwritten separately from property-in-transit risk. Commercial crime insurance is the product built to cover losses caused by an employee's own dishonest acts, including theft of tools, equipment, cash, or inventory. Some inland marine policies can add an employee theft endorsement, but absent that endorsement or a separate crime policy, a loss caused by an employee is typically excluded from the inland marine floater.

Example: a Georgia landscaping company reports $8,000 in mowers and trimmers missing from a locked equipment trailer. If the loss turns out to have been an outside break-in, the inland marine floater covering that trailer's contents would typically respond, subject to policy terms and any deductible. If the investigation instead shows a former employee used a spare key to take the equipment before quitting, the same policy is likely to deny the claim under the employee theft exclusion, and the loss would only be covered if the business separately carried commercial crime coverage or an employee theft endorsement.

This distinction matters at the point of filing a claim. Filing a stolen-tool claim before knowing whether an employee was involved can create a mismatch between how the loss is described and what the policy actually excludes, which can complicate or delay a decision on the claim. Georgia carriers are still bound by claim-handling timelines regardless of the outcome; see how long does a Georgia carrier have to decide an inland marine claim for those deadlines.

What inland marine does cover, and how it differs from crime coverage, is laid out in what does inland marine insurance cover in Georgia, despite the name and on the inland marine insurance page. Whether a business's current inland marine floater includes an employee theft endorsement, or needs a separate crime policy, is something a coverage review can confirm against the actual policy language.