The contract bonding business is fighting back! We were attacked and the battle is on!

On April 9, the following article appeared in Smart Money, the Wall Street Journal magazine, about construction bonding:
http://www.smartmoney.com/small-business/small-business/an-obscure-kind-of-insurance-that-hinders-small-businesses-1331740792366/

In it, the author suggests that big, mean bonding companies aren’t doing all they can to help small contractors get started and then bonded. Surety professionals, both agents and underwriters, spend a lot of time educating their clients and prospects.


Think about why. Because if we can help get a small or beginning contractor to be a better operator, and more profitable, they can buy more bonds!

And if they haven’t progressed to the point where they can get the bonds they want, they shouldn’t be bonding jobs they can’t qualify for. That’s how the bond underwriting process is supposed to work. It is designed as a prequalifier to protect all us taxpayers from unqualified contractors building our government’s projects. (Should we bond members of Congress? Good luck finding a bonding company willing to do that!)

Before I rant further, there’s a much better response from the National Association of Surety Bond Producers (NASBP) CEO, Mark McCallum, at this link www.nasbp-news.org/pdf/NASBPLetterSmartMoney.pdf

I hope we get a prompt and useful response from Smart Money. Perhaps if enough people respond like the NASBP has, it will encourage Smart Money to produce a second article that better explains how the few scraps of paper we provide for bonded jobs actually work, and how we’re always trying to get more contractors to use our products. If they don’t produce another article, at least maybe our response will keep THEM awake for a few nights!