Commercial Crime Insurance
Also known as Crime insurance, fidelity coverage, employee dishonesty / commercial fidelity bond
Most theft losses don’t come through a broken window — they come from someone you trusted with the books.
Commercial crime insurance protects your money, securities, and property from dishonesty — employee theft and embezzlement, forged checks, the fraudulent wire that quietly drains an account. It’s aimed squarely at the losses your general liability and property policies leave out, because those don’t cover an inside job or a clever scam. It matters most if you handle other people’s money (hello, property managers and trust accounts) or run a lot of cash and payments through the business. Worth knowing: crime and cyber overlap on those “tricked into wiring money” scams, so the two policies have to be coordinated — and making sure a loss doesn’t fall in the crack between them is exactly what we watch for.
Reviewed for accuracy by Mark Hutchings, Licensed Insurance Producer (NV #3600994).
Who needs Commercial Crime?
- Property managers and real estate firms holding owners’ rents, security deposits, or HOA reserves in trust accounts — money that belongs to someone else
- Food, beverage, retail, and hospitality businesses where employees handle cash drawers, take payments, or control inventory that can be skimmed or diverted
- Any business that wires money, pays vendors, or runs payroll and could be tricked into sending funds to a fraudster (funds-transfer or social-engineering fraud)
- Companies with bookkeepers, controllers, or financial staff who can move money, issue checks, or access accounts with limited oversight
- Firms whose contracts, lenders, or franchise agreements require employee dishonesty or fidelity coverage as a condition of doing business
What it covers
- Employee theft and embezzlement — money, securities, or property stolen by your own employees, including schemes that quietly build over months or years
- Forgery or alteration — losses from forged or altered checks, drafts, or other written financial instruments
- Funds-transfer fraud — fraudulent instructions to your bank that move money out of your accounts without your knowledge
- Computer fraud — theft of money or property through the fraudulent manipulation or unauthorized entry of your computer systems
- Money and securities — loss of cash, checks, or securities both on your premises (inside) and while in transit or in a custodian’s care (outside)
- Third-party / client property — depending on the form, theft of a client’s money or property while it’s in your care, plus optional social-engineering fraud endorsements for deception-based wire scams
What it doesn’t cover
- Data-breach response, privacy liability, and notification costs after a hack — that’s cyber liability insurance
- Bodily injury or third-party property-damage lawsuits arising from your operations — that’s general liability insurance
- Physical loss or damage to your own buildings, equipment, or stock from fire, water, or storms — that’s commercial property insurance
- Theft of business property by a non-employee burglar at your premises (loss of inventory/equipment, as opposed to money & securities) — typically covered by commercial property / business owners policy
- Employee injuries or job-related illness — that’s workers’ compensation insurance
- Your own poor judgment, bad investments, or trading losses, plus indirect or consequential losses like lost profits or reputational harm — generally not covered by any single policy, and excluded here
Real claim scenarios
The long-game bookkeeper
A Reno property management company’s bookkeeper quietly diverts owner rent payments into a personal account over three years, papering over the gap with falsified ledgers. When a routine audit uncovers the scheme, the firm is left with a substantial shortfall in its trust account. Employee theft coverage responds to the direct loss of the misappropriated funds.
The fake-vendor wire
A food distributor’s accounts-payable clerk gets an email that looks like it came from a known supplier, asking that future payments go to “updated” banking details. A five-figure wire goes out before anyone notices the address was spoofed. A social-engineering / funds-transfer fraud endorsement responds to the loss.
The forged payroll checks
A departing manager at a California restaurant group forges the owner’s signature on several company checks and cashes them before the account gets flagged. Forgery or alteration coverage reimburses the business for the fraudulent checks the bank honored.
Scenarios are illustrative; actual coverage depends on your policy terms.
How it’s priced
Crime insurance is priced around how exposed your money is and how well you control access to it. Carriers look at how much cash flows through, how many people can touch it, and what checks you have in place to catch dishonesty early. Premiums vary widely by business size and limits, but small-business crime coverage often starts in the low hundreds to low thousands of dollars per year as a general range — your final number depends entirely on your operation and chosen limits.
- The coverage limits and deductibles you select for each insuring agreement (employee theft, forgery, computer fraud, etc.)
- How many employees you have, and how many can access funds, accounting systems, or signing authority
- Your annual revenue and the typical amount of money, securities, or client funds on hand or in transit
- Your internal controls — segregation of duties, dual authorization for wires, regular reconciliations, and audits
- Your industry and exposure type — property managers with trust accounts and cash-heavy hospitality operations are weighed differently
- Your claims and loss history, and whether you’ve had prior employee-dishonesty losses
What to watch out for
- Crime is not cyber — confirm whether social-engineering and funds-transfer fraud are actually included or need a specific endorsement, because the costliest scams often fall right in that gap
- Watch the “loss sustained” vs. “loss discovered” trigger — it controls whether losses from a prior period are covered when you finally find them, which matters most when you’re switching carriers
- Third-party (client property) coverage is often separate from first-party (your own money) coverage — if you’re a property manager holding others’ funds, you usually need both
- Sub-limits and deductibles on social-engineering or funds-transfer fraud are frequently far lower than the headline policy limit
- Make sure your limit reflects the most money realistically at risk at one time, not just an arbitrary round number — under-insuring is the most common, and most painful, mistake
Commercial Crime FAQs
Related coverages
Related reading
We tailor Commercial Crime for: Commercial Real Estate, Food & Beverage.
Get Commercial Crime coverage that fits
We’ll match your limits and endorsements to what your contracts actually require — across Nevada & California.