Does my Company need a Crime Insurance Policy?
As a business owner you work hard to hire the best employees. You vet all your employees, do background checks on new hires, and implement some safety controls.
Unfortunately, white collar crimes and internal theft can happen to any company. No one is immune even those with the most rigorous safety controls. Anyone can be betrayed even by those they trust the most. White-collar crime and internal theft should be a concern for any business owner and be written into any risk management plan. Most employers do not want to believe that this type of crime can happen to them and they risk their future by not ensuring that this peril is as minimized as possible. Many companies do not see the important of crime risk management or crime insurance.
Internal theft can be just as devastating, or even more so, than a physical break-in, a fire, or a liability claim.
Small Business are more at risk for loss related to crime as they usually have less security controls and even a small loss can be extremely devastating. While nothing can replace appropriate vetting and security controls, a crime insurance policy can mitigate the financial loss stemming for an extremely traumatizing event. These types of crimes can take place over a significant amount of time before being discovered and the losses can be extremely extensive.
So what exactly is a Crime Insurance Policy?
“A policy providing coverage for dishonest employees, loss of money orders, depositor’s forgery, or counterfeit currency.”
A crime insurance policy is a policy that is designed to meet the needs of organizations other than financial institutions (such as banks). A commercial crime policy typically provides several different types of crime coverage, such as: employee dishonesty coverage; forgery or alteration coverage; computer fraud coverage; funds transfer fraud coverage; kidnap, ransom, or extortion coverage; money and securities coverage; and money orders and counterfeit money coverage.
What Does a Crime Insurance Policy Cover?
They usually do not cover: Your actions or the actions of your partner, your liabilities that result from crime-related losses, your accounting errors, and these policies do not cover those in certain occupations such as: attorneys, claim adjustors, or companies in the financial industry.
Crime policies can also cover theft from a third-party, not only an internal theft. Criminals have become more adept at using computers and software to commit crimes such as forgery, identity theft, computer fraud, and the loss. These types of theft have become increasing more common and can be difficult to detect or stop.
Some examples of Crime Policy Claims can include:
· An employee uses a company credit card to purchase 20 IPads. The employee resigns, and the IPad are never recovered.
· A job foreman is given access to the company credit card. He uses the credit card to buy items for his personal residence.
· An employee opened an email with an attached file that contained a virus. The virus obtained access to the company’s bank account. A fraudulent electronic wire transfer is initiated and $150,000 is wired to an unknown bank account in Georgia. The money was withdrawn before it could be recovered.
· A vice president of finance embezzled more than $1.2 million over a 10-year period. A casual review of the bank statements did not reveal the scheme for over 10 years until a rigorous audit was done.
· A bike messenger skimmed money from cash deposits that he was supposed to courier to a local bank.
· Over five years, an employee schemed with vendors to inflate product and service prices while the employee kept the difference.
Contact Fidella Insurance Agency to learn whether a Crime Insurance Policy work for your business and Risk Management Plan.
What is Umbrella Insurance? Read more here.
