Crime Insurance

As most business owners know, the risks facing your business seem to be increasing… almost on a daily basis. If crime exposures aren’t on your mind, here’s why they should be.

Crime is a simple word for a multitude of dishonest acts, and you need to be prepared. Crimes can range from a simple street robbery to a safe burglary, employee theft to a kidnapping. These definitions may help our look at crime insurance:

• Burglary: entering and leaving a premise with no legal right
• Robbery: taking property from a person by threat of physical or mental harm
• Theft: a catch-all category including the terms above
• Extortion: surrender of property by threat of physical or mental harm to a person or related third party
• Embezzlement: theft of others’ property in your care

Before you buy crime insurance, review the coverage in your existing property insurance policies. Is your property insurance policy on a named peril basis? Or is it on an “everything is covered except” basis, also known as Special Form coverage? It makes a difference! If it’s a named peril, your need for separate crime insurance is likely to be important.

Crime insurance covers a broad range of activity:

• robbery
• burglary
• theft
• disappearance and destruction
• fraud
• forgery
• embezzlement

The available insurance coverage is divided into a number of areas. These cover only specific types of crimes. Make sure you and your agent consider your particular exposures to crime. Some businesses need coverage for outside theft because they’re routinely traveling away from their office with money. Other businesses require coverage for safe burglary. Others require only employee dishonesty coverage.

Some crime coverage may be available in other insurance policies. For example, kidnapping can be part of a Directors and Officers policy.

To learn more about Crime Insurance, visit our Resource Center or contact one of our licensed advisors. We’re here to help!