October 12, 2020 – The Surety Association of Canada recently released a white paper, “Digital bonds: the way of the future—and the present”, which provides a detailed overview of digital bonds, including three essential criteria to be considered legitimate:

1. Integrity of Content: The assurances that the document received is the true document executed and the content has not been changed or altered.

2. Secure Access: Restricting the access to the document to those authorized to view and/or download it.

3. Verifiability/Enforceability: Assurances that the document was duly executed by the parties identified and that it is enforceable in law.

The white paper cautions users to be wary of commonly used substitutes for digital bonds, such as scanned images, which may be expedient, but do not meet these cornerstone criteria.

Steven D. Ness, SAC president, says that while the association website provides comprehensive information regarding e-bonding and digital bonds—including an FAQ section—“we felt it necessary to create this white paper to provide a printable resource for various stakeholder groups”.

Additionally, Ness says “our entire SAC team is here to help provide support and direction to owners who are shifting their processes towards the acceptance of digital/e-bonds by connecting them with an e-bonding system vendor [and] we are available to provide guidance to contractors, or others, on how to obtain a digital/e-bond by connecting them with a SAC broker member”.

The Surety Association of Canada (SAC) is the national trade advocacy association that represents the interests of the surety industry across Canada. Its members consist of primary surety firms, surety reinsurers, surety/insurance brokers, and other organizations that provide related and complementary services to the surety industry.