Money & Securities Coverage

Money and securities coverage is a form of crime insurance that protects a business's cash, checks, money orders, and securities against theft, robbery, burglary, destruction, and mysterious disappearance. It is usually written with two coverage parts: an "inside the premises" limit for money stolen from the store, safe, or register, and an "outside the premises" or in-transit limit for cash being carried to the bank by an employee or messenger. Retailers, restaurants, and any cash-heavy operation rely on it because a standard property policy's coverage for money is often tiny or excluded.

For a small-business buyer, the important distinction is between this coverage and employee dishonesty. Money and securities responds to outsider theft and physical loss of cash; theft by your own staff is a separate insuring agreement — a fidelity bond or employee-dishonesty coverage. It also generally will not pay for losses induced by trickery, such as being fooled into wiring funds, which fall under social engineering fraud. Because base property and business owners policy forms cap money coverage with a small sublimit, businesses that keep meaningful cash on hand or make regular bank runs usually need to schedule higher limits.

The practical guidance is to set the inside and outside limits to your real exposure: estimate the maximum cash in the register and safe at any moment for the inside limit, and the largest single deposit an employee carries for the in-transit limit. Check the requirements — many policies condition full coverage on cash being kept in a locked safe after hours or on a two-person deposit procedure — and confirm whether counterfeit currency, credit-card slips, and money orders are included. Keeping the two limits properly sized prevents a robbery or a lost deposit from producing an uninsured shortfall.