What is the SBA Surety Bond Program?

Many surety companies who offer contract surety bonds and the Small Business Administration (SBA) have partnered to provide contractors, who do not qualify on a standard basis, access to surety bond support for a very small cost to the contractor. Most contract bonds, including bid, performance, and payment bonds, are supported through the SBA and offer contractors the ability to procure and complete contracts that require them to post a surety bond.

Bonding Solutions is a leader in the surety industry for SBA surety bond placement and can assist you with any questions or if you need an SBA guaranteed surety bond today. Give us a call to get started.

Why would I need an SBA backed surety bond?

Many contractors are either new in business, a small business, have bad credit, or have experienced financial challenges. It can be very difficult to qualify for a surety bond under these circumstances. The underwriting involved with qualifying for bonding can be rigorous or rely on good credit alone. There is a lot of financial information about your construction or service company and or its owners that needs to be disclosed. It is very much like going to a bank and applying for a loan. The SBA has a program that assists with these challenges.

The Office of Surety Guarantees (called the SBG) is the office within the SBA that handles SBA surety bond program approvals. Their role is that of issuing, upon underwriting qualification, a formal surety bond guaranty. This is done through participation with qualified surety companies and surety agencies, like Bonding Solutions. The SBA guaranty is there as a tool to help the surety company fill the gaps in those instances where a contractor does not qualify under a standard bond underwriters’ approval. With the SBA’s guaranty, most often it will help you obtain the bond thereby allowing you to bid a project, or bond it according to the terms of the contract. Without the bond in place, your bid will not be accepted, and/or you will not be awarded the contract.

Recent changes to the SBG have set generous limits to help in ensuring a contractor or service provider has an adequate bonding capacity to go after the jobs they want. We have seen payment and performance and bid surety bonds issued as much as $6.5 million. If you are bidding a Federally funded project and the contracting office will certify it, we can offer bonds in those instances up to $10 million through the SBG. That can be a sizable job for a well-qualified small business! The SBA provides a powerful tool to obtain surety bond support under the circumstances listed above.

Surety Bond List