Paper Surety Bond
Issued manually with wet signatures for each person signing the bond.
Data extracted manually or by OCR with potential errors.
Time to complete:
- Surety Broker 30 - 45 Minutes to prepare
- Principal: 20- 30 Minutes to prepare
- Obligee: 20 - 30 Minutes to validate
Total - Over one hour
Process for issuance
- The surety bond form is completed by filling in blanks on the form before printing.
- The person manually executing the bond provides a wet signature
- The person manually executing the bond provides evidence they are authorized by a manually prepared power of attorney form confirming the authority level.
- A separate manually completed notary confirms the person executing the bond was verified as the person executing the bond.
- The original bond is mailed to others that need to add their wet signature and similar evidence of authority to execute the surety bond form.
The receiver of the bond needs to confirm:
- Bond form is completed accurately
- Power of attorney is completed accurately
- Limit of authority is consistent with the bond amount.
- Notary for accuracy and consistent with person executing the bond
- Surety is licensed in the jurisdiction
- Surety has an acceptable BEST rating
- Surety has an acceptable T-List for the bond amount.
- As an extra step some bonds require additional wet signatures as witnesses.
Validation
One the bond review is complete the receiver needs to validate the bond by manually contacting the surety or by submitting a manually prepared form to the surety
Electronic Surety Bond
Issued manually with digital signatures for each person signing the bond.
Digital signatures provided by companies like DocuSign, JotForm, HelloSign, PandaDoc, Adobe Sign, Qwilr, HoneyBook, AND.CO, Proposify, GleanQuote, SignNow and eSign Genie.
Data extracted manually or by OCR, with potential errors.
Time to complete:
- Surety Broker: 30 - 45 Minutes to prepare
- Principal: 20- 30 Minutes to prepare
- Obligee: 20 - 30 Minutes to validate
Total - Over one hour
Burden to complete:
- Requires the person executing the bond to be present and provide wet signature
- Requires a notary to be present and provide wet signature.
Process for issuance
- The surety bond form is completed by filling in blanks on the form before printing.
- The person manually executing the bond provides evidence they are authorized by a manually prepared power of attorney form confirming the authority level.
- E-signatures are added to the document
- The original bond is emailed to others that need to add their e-signature
The receiver of the bond needs to confirm:
- Bond form is completed accurately
- Power of attorney is completed accurately
- Limit of authority is consistent with the bond amount.
- Notary for accuracy and consistent with person executing the bond
- Surety is licensed in the jurisdiction
- Surety has an acceptable BEST rating
- Surety has an acceptable T-List for the bond amount.
- As an extra step some bonds require additional wet signatures as witnesses.
Validation
Once the bond review is complete the receiver needs to validate the bond by manually contacting the surety or by submitting a manually prepared form to the surety
Digital Surety Bond
Issued online and distributed by email, or secure download, with standardized data elements that can be imported with bond text incorporated by reference to the specific bond form.
Can be viewed and printed as a PDF.
Data elements are importable error free.
Time to complete:
- Surety Broker 10 Minutes to prepare
- Principal: 5 Minutes to execute online
- Obligee: 1 Minute to validate online
Total - Under 20 minutes
Process for issuance
- Person executing the surety bond logs on their authorized electronic surety bond provider service Surety2000, BondPro, Surepath or eSurety.
- Person executing the bond is verified by their secure login credentials, which includes which surety companies they have power of attorney with, and what their authority limits are for reach surety.
- The surety bond form is completed by entering the standardized bond form data elements online.
- The bond is verified for compliance with state licensing, BEST rating and T-List requirements before it can be executed.
- The bond is executed online by the surety and/or surety broker.
- The principal logs on and verified by their secure login credentials to execute the bond.
- The electronic surety bond provider issues a Bond Validation Number (BVN) that can be used by obliges or other stakeholders to validate the bond online and receive the surety bond data elements for importing into their respective systems along with the PDF image.
- Because everyone executing the bond was independently validated and verified no need for power of attorney, notaries, or digital signatures from third parties.
Validation
Done online with Bond Validation number
Because of electronic surety bond provider system and process checks the receiver of the digital bond does not need to confirm:
Bond form is completed accurately
- The online processing has internal checks to make sure the bond is completed accurately.
Power of attorney is completed accurately
- The online processing has internal checks to make sure the power of attorney is completed accurately.
Limit of authority is consistent with the bond amount.
- The online processing has internal checks to make sure the bond amount is within the limit authorized by the surety for the person executing the bond on behalf of the surety.
Notary for accuracy and consistent with person executing the bond
- Notary not needed for digital bond. The online system verifies who executed the bond as part of the secure login process.
Surety is licensed in the jurisdiction
- The online system verifies the surety is licensed in the state.
Surety has an acceptable BEST rating
- The online system verifies the BEST rating of the surety.
Surety has an acceptable T-List for the bond amount.
- The online system verifies the T-list and that the bond amount is in compliance with T-List size limits.
As an extra step some bonds require additional wet signatures as witnesses.
- Witness is not needed with a digital bond
