Commercial Crime Insurance — Minnesota

Most business theft comes from inside.
Your GL and property policies cover none of it.

Employee embezzlement, forged checks, CEO fraud, and computer theft are completely excluded from standard commercial insurance. Organizations lose an estimated 5% of revenue to fraud annually — and small businesses are hit hardest because they have fewer controls. Commercial crime insurance is what fills that gap.

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Employee theft, forgery, computer fraud, social engineering
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Average scheme runs 18 months before discovery
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Local agency — Chaska, MN since 2011

Organizations lose an estimated 5% of revenue to fraud each year. Small businesses are the most vulnerable.

The threat is not usually a stranger. It is the bookkeeper who has been with you for eight years. The manager you trusted. The employee who had access because they needed it to do their job. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners finds that the average fraud scheme runs 18 months before detection — long enough to cause catastrophic losses before anyone notices.

  • Bookkeeper writes checks to fake vendors for two years
  • Manager skims cash from register over 14 months — $60,000 gone
  • CEO fraud email tricks employee into wiring $85,000
  • Trusted accountant transfers funds to personal account
  • Inventory manipulation covers $40,000 in stolen merchandise

Your general liability policy was designed for third-party claims. Your property policy was designed for physical damage. Neither was designed for financial losses caused by the people inside your business. Commercial crime insurance is the only coverage that addresses this exposure directly.

The coverage gap to understand

GL: Covers third-party bodily injury and property damage — not employee theft
Property: Covers fire, wind, and physical damage — typically excludes employee dishonesty
Crime: Specifically covers theft, fraud, forgery, and computer crime by employees and outsiders

Coverage Types

What commercial crime insurance covers

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Employee Dishonesty

The core coverage — theft, embezzlement, and fraudulent acts by your employees. Covers the bookkeeper skimming accounts, the manager stealing inventory, the trusted employee manipulating financial records. Average embezzlement scheme: 18 months before discovery.

Minnesota small businesses often rely on a single trusted bookkeeper with broad financial access — the highest-risk profile for embezzlement.
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Forgery and Alteration

Covers losses when someone forges your signature on checks, alters check amounts, or creates fraudulent instruments drawn on your accounts. A stolen or forged check that clears your bank account is a covered loss.

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Computer Fraud

Covers theft of money through unauthorized computer access — a hacker who gains access to your banking credentials and transfers funds, or malware that allows unauthorized access to financial systems. Distinct from cyber liability, which covers breach response costs.

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Social Engineering / CEO Fraud

Covers losses when employees are tricked into transferring funds — a criminal impersonating your CEO requesting an urgent wire transfer, fake vendor emails requesting payment to a new account. This is now the most common and costly crime loss for small businesses.

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Money and Securities

Covers loss of cash and securities from your premises or in transit — robbery, safe burglary, theft during bank deposits, and mysterious disappearance of cash.

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Funds Transfer Fraud

Covers unauthorized wire transfer instructions — criminals who provide fraudulent banking information and divert legitimate payments. Often overlaps with social engineering; verify both are covered.

The social engineering question: Traditional crime policies often exclude or severely sublimit social engineering losses. CEO fraud and vendor impersonation are now the most common large crime losses for small businesses. When reviewing any crime policy, always ask specifically whether social engineering is covered and at what limit.

Risk Management

Controls that reduce your crime exposure

Insurance covers losses after they happen. These controls prevent them from happening — and many underwriters offer premium discounts for documented procedures.

Segregate financial duties

Different people should authorize transactions, process them, and reconcile accounts. This single control eliminates the majority of embezzlement opportunities. When one person does all three, fraud is easy to hide.

Require mandatory vacations

Fraud is frequently discovered when someone else covers for a vacationing employee. Requiring annual vacations and cross-training a backup for every financial role is one of the most effective fraud detection tools.

Verify all banking changes by phone

Vendor impersonation and CEO fraud almost always arrive via email. A simple policy of verifying any payment instruction change by calling a known phone number — not one provided in the suspicious email — stops most of these schemes.

Set coverage limit realistically

The average scheme runs 18 months. Your limit should reflect cumulative potential losses over that window — not just what could be stolen in a day. A $25,000 limit is often inadequate for businesses with meaningful financial exposure.

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Minnesota Commercial Crime Insurance Checklist

Assess your financial controls, identify your highest-risk exposures, and prepare for your crime insurance application.

Download Free Checklist →
Quick Rate Estimate

What does commercial crime insurance cost?

Premiums are primarily driven by coverage limit and industry. Answer four questions to see your range.

Our Process

Three steps to crime coverage

1

Assess Your Exposure

We identify where your business is most vulnerable — who has financial access, how funds flow, what controls exist, and where gaps are. Social engineering and computer fraud exposure are always part of this conversation.

2

Select Coverage and Limit

Based on your actual exposure, we recommend coverage types and limits. The right limit reflects cumulative potential loss over an 18-month detection window, not daily exposure. We work with multiple carriers to find competitive pricing.

3

Review and Update

Crime exposure changes as your business grows and your team changes. We review your crime coverage at renewal and when you make significant operational changes — new financial systems, staff changes in key roles, or rapid growth.

Frequently Asked Questions

What businesses ask about commercial crime coverage

Some BOPs include limited employee dishonesty coverage — often $5,000 to $25,000. This is usually inadequate for meaningful protection. A bookkeeper who steals $2,000 per month for 18 months costs $36,000. Review your policy and consider standalone crime coverage for appropriate limits.
Traditional crime policies often exclude or severely sublimit social engineering losses. Many carriers now offer it as an endorsement with limits of $100,000 to $250,000. This is the single most important question to ask when buying crime coverage — because CEO fraud and vendor impersonation are now the most common large crime losses.
Most policies do not require identifying the specific employee — you need to demonstrate that an employee was responsible for the loss. This is important because theft is often discovered after the employee has left the company.
The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners reports that the average fraud scheme runs 18 months before detection. This is why crime coverage limits should reflect cumulative potential exposure over that window, not just a single-event loss.
It depends on the policy. Some cover only direct W-2 employees; others extend to temporary workers, contractors, and volunteers. If you use contractors or temps with financial access, verify the policy covers them.
Segregating financial duties — different people authorize, process, and reconcile — is the highest-impact control. Mandatory vacations and cross-training are the best detection tool. Requiring phone verification of any payment instruction change stops most social engineering schemes.
Possibly. A claim signals that controls may be inadequate, which increases perceived risk. Demonstrating improved controls after a loss — documented procedures, segregated duties, bank verification policies — can help mitigate rate increases at renewal.
Get Your Quote

The threat is already inside your business. The question is whether you are covered for it.

Commercial crime insurance is the only policy specifically designed to cover financial losses from employee theft, fraud, and computer crime.

  • Employee dishonesty and embezzlement covered
  • Social engineering endorsement assessed
  • Coverage limit sized to actual 18-month exposure
  • Multiple carriers compared
  • Controls review included

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Crime coverage has details that matter — especially the social engineering question. Standard policies have real gaps here that most business owners do not know about until they need to file a claim.

The most common gap is buying a crime policy that excludes the exact type of fraud that is most likely to happen.

Featured Agent
Carolyn Todd

Carolyn Todd

Commercial Lines Agent

I work with businesses on commercial crime insurance and the social engineering conversation is always the first one I have. Standard crime policies often exclude CEO fraud and vendor impersonation — which are now among the most common and largest crime losses for small businesses. I also talk through coverage limits relative to actual financial exposure, because a $25,000 limit on a business with a bookkeeper who has unsupervised access to accounts is not meaningful protection.

(952) 392-9508[email protected]options-insurance.com
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Last updated: April 9, 2026