Surety Bonds Editing and Proofreading Services

A contractor buys a performance bond, treats it as insurance, and defaults. The surety pays the employer £340,000 and then sends the contractor a demand for £340,000 plus costs, secured against the director's house. Every word of that was in the indemnity agreement he signed, and he had understood himself to be buying protection.

We edit what surety companies, brokers and contractors produce — bond wordings and their summaries, general indemnity agreements and their explanations, application and financial disclosure documents, claim notifications and demands, letters explaining a call on a bond, underwriting requirement communications, and the material used to explain surety to first-time principals. Our editors work on a product routinely mistaken for a different one.

The explanation of the indemnity agreement is where surety writing has to do its hardest work, and its failure is a document that lets a contractor believe they have bought insurance. A bond protects the employer and the contractor pays for it twice if it is called. We work through these so the direction of the protection is stated first and plainly — this protects the party you are contracting with, not you — since almost every misunderstanding in this product flows from that one point; so the indemnity is explained as a repayment obligation with an example in money, because "you agree to indemnify the surety" is a phrase that does not register and "if we pay £340,000 you owe us £340,000" does; so the personal guarantees are identified by who signs and what is at risk, given that a director's home is frequently security and this should never be discovered later; so the surety's right to settle a claim without the contractor's agreement is stated, as contractors assume they can dispute a call and often cannot; so the costs and interest that attach to a demand are included in the worked example; so the circumstances that trigger a call are described in the employer's terms; so the release of the bond and what the contractor must do to obtain it is set out, since bonds outlive projects and tie up capacity; and so the difference from insurance is stated in a sentence at the top. Documents written this way are signed by people who understand them.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including bond wordings, financial information and claims correspondence. We are editors rather than sureties, brokers or lawyers, and we give no legal advice and no view on any bond, indemnity or claim. What we can do is make sure the signer knows which way the protection runs.