Bad bond credit surety
Bad bond credit surety
In the early 2000s, the surety bond industry suffered severe losses due to high claims because of which the underwriting norms became a lot stricter and it became very difficult for high risk applicants to get bonds. These high risk people were asked to furnish 100% collaterals to get issuance of bonds. The markets shrunk and the agents were forced to look at newer ways to find new accounts. This supply demand mismatch for bonds led to the development of bad bond credit surety programs which underwrote high risk bond applicants at a considerably higher rate. Traditional surety underwrites only those bonds which have a slim or a 0% chance of loss. Hence, bad bond credit surety is a deviation from the traditional thought process as in this case rather than looking to underwrite bond with a 0% loss ratio, bonds are issued at a higher premium. The premiums are higher because they have the possible claims factored in. The first company to offer bad bond credit surety was Capitol Indemnity Corporation. The success of this company has encouraged a lot of other companies to start offering high risk bonds. Some of the available bad bond credit surety requires collaterals, however the trend is decreasing as more and more bonding companies are now getting away from this practice. What they are doing is to increase the rates even higher. For some principals, that means bad news as they have to pay higher rates even while possessing collaterals. For the others, it means good news as they can now get bad bond credit surety even without having any collateral. There are a few alternatives to bad bond credit surety which might actually be cheaper. An irrevocable letter of credit is one such method. In case the principal has enough liquid cash, he can get a bank freeze of the guarantee amount and issue a letter of credit from the bank. This works in the same was as a bond, but banks usually charge 1% as service charge which is much cheaper than high premium bad bond credit surety. Currently, there are either low risk programs or high risk bad bond credit surety programs. But there exist a big market which lies somewhere in the middle. Unfortunately, these principals also have to pay higher rates as they are categorized along with the high risk principals. In the future, this middle ground rates will start to develop and customized surety programs for this market will get developed. However, this will take time as surety companies are not willing to take risks easily.