Is commercial crime the same as a fidelity bond in Georgia?

A fidelity bond and a commercial crime policy are related but not identical. A fidelity bond is a narrower form of crime coverage focused specifically on employee theft, meaning money or property an employee steals from the business. It is sometimes required outright, such as when a client contract, a franchise agreement, or a bonding requirement for a specific industry calls for proof of fidelity bond coverage before a business can do the work.

Commercial crime insurance covers that same employee theft exposure and adds several other categories a fidelity bond does not reach: forgery, meaning a forged signature on a check or financial document; computer fraud, meaning theft carried out through unauthorized access to a computer system; funds-transfer fraud, meaning money moved out of the business through fraudulent transfer instructions; and theft of money and securities generally, including loss caused by an outside third party rather than an employee. A fidelity bond, by contrast, generally stays limited to the employee-theft piece alone.

Example: a Macon staffing agency signs a contract with a large client that requires proof of a fidelity bond covering the staffing agency's placed employees before those employees can work on-site. A fidelity bond satisfies that specific contract requirement. If the staffing agency separately wants protection against a forged check from its own accounts payable process, or a funds-transfer fraud loss from a spoofed vendor email, the fidelity bond alone does not cover either one. A broader commercial crime policy would.

Some carriers issue a fidelity bond as one insuring agreement inside a broader commercial crime policy, rather than as a fully separate product, so the line between the two can blur depending on how a specific carrier packages its forms. Confirming which structure applies to a specific business, and whether a contract's fidelity bond requirement is satisfied by a broader crime policy's employee-theft section, is something a coverage review can verify against the actual contract language.

Georgia does not require either a fidelity bond or a commercial crime policy by statute (see does Georgia require commercial crime insurance), though a specific contract or client can still require one. Cost for the broader coverage is covered in what commercial crime insurance costs for a Georgia business, and what falls outside either form, such as theft by a business owner, is addressed separately. The commercial crime insurance and Georgia commercial crime insurance pages cover both forms in more detail, and the carriers page lists carriers offering this coverage in Georgia and Alabama.