| Crime | Cyber | |
|---|---|---|
| Core subject | Money and securities | Data and systems |
| Classic loss | Employee embezzlement, forged checks | Breach, ransomware, privacy claims |
| Wire fraud via spoofed email | Social-engineering endorsement territory | Sometimes covered, usually sublimited |
| First-party focus | Your stolen funds | Your response costs and recovery |
| Third-party claims | Rarely | Central — data subjects, regulators, partners |
Where the confusion comes from
Funds-transfer fraud is the seam: the attacker touched a computer, so it sounds like cyber; money left, so it reads like crime. Carriers know, and both forms historically excluded or sublimited it until endorsements caught up. Unendorsed programs still discover the gap at claim time.
Businesses moving client money — title, escrow, payroll, agencies — need the social-engineering grant sized to a real wire, not the token sublimit that dresses a quote.
When you need both
The disciplined program carries both: crime for funds in all their vanishing forms, cyber for data and systems, with social-engineering coverage placed deliberately in one of them at a limit that matches your largest routine transfer. Explore D&O insurance, cyber liability, and fiduciary liability, or start with employment practices liability.
A claim that lands in the gap
A spoofed vendor email redirects a six-figure payment. The crime form’s computer-fraud clause and the cyber form’s sublimit each cover part or none — the outcome was decided at placement, not at the incident.
A bookkeeper’s two-year skim never touches malware. Pure crime coverage; the cyber policy has nothing to say.
Scenarios are illustrative composites, not descriptions of actual claims or outcomes. Whether any claim is covered depends on the policy issued.
How to decide
- Map your largest routine transfer — that is the social-engineering limit conversation.
- Employee-dishonesty limits should reflect access, not headcount.
- Verification procedures (call-backs, dual approval) are both underwriting currency and the actual defense.
- Both lines quote alongside your management liability package efficiently.
We market your account and you compare terms side by side — no obligation.
Get Multiple Quotes within minutesFrequently asked questions
- We have cyber. Are wire frauds covered?
- Only if the social-engineering endorsement says so at a usable limit — the single most misunderstood grant we review. We read it before you need it.
- Does crime cover ransomware payments?
- No — extortion is cyber’s territory. Crime covers stolen funds, not ransomed systems.
- ERISA bond versus crime policy?
- The ERISA fidelity bond protects plan assets and is its own requirement; the crime policy protects company funds. Related, not interchangeable.
- What starts quotes?
- Transfer volumes, controls, headcount — one submission alongside the rest of the program.
Provident Financial Group is an independent insurance agency, not a carrier. We place coverage for cyber insurance vs. crime insurance in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, the District of Columbia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Georgia, Florida, Texas, California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Indiana, Nevada, and Arizona.