Bonding is a type of insurance that you can get from almost any business insurance company. Typical rates I have seen from places like Mouer Foster are $100 for $10,000 bond.

A bond is in case a worker steals from a client, the client and the company is protected up to your bond limit. Although the worker has to be proven guilty in a court of law for it to kick in.

Often times sole proprietors ask if they really need it? In all reality, it is pretty rare that a business owner would steal from their clients. If they stole, they wouldn’t have a business, right? So from the business owners perspective it usually isn’t necessary.

Although from the client’s perspective, they usually feel note safe and secure having it. Why? I am really not sure. If a business owner stole from the house, they certainly are not going to make themselves available to the client to give them the bonding info and then go through the whole process of investigating. Or at least my common sense seems to think they would just disappear, right? So in actuality, a client requesting that a sole proprietor be bonded is really a mute topic. It doesn’t make logical sense if you understand how bonding works.

However, for pure marketing purposed, I would suggest that a sole proprietor does just pay the small fee to get bonding insurance. Saying that you are “bonded and insured” makes clients feel safer, even though, like I said previously, there is no logical evidence to really support that.

Last, if you have staff, even if you do trust them, it is still a good idea to get bonding insurance for the company. The clients will feel better, and you (as the business) would be covered if any of your beloved staff deciders to go to the dark side.