Ask the average business owner to name a surety bond and you will hear “contractor license bond” or maybe “freight broker bond.” Those are the household names. The surety bond world is much bigger than that. There are thousands of specific bond types, many of them required by federal agencies, state regulators, and industry programs that most people have never thought about. The businesses that need these bonds know they need them. Everyone else has no idea they exist.
Here are five surety bonds that fly under most people’s radar but are very much required if you happen to be the business that needs one. They have one thing in common: all five run a minimum of $50,000, and several can run much higher.
1. The CPEO Bond (Federal IRS Bond for Certified PEOs)
A Certified Professional Employer Organization (CPEO) is a PEO that has gone through voluntary federal certification with the IRS. The certification carries real benefits for the PEO and its client businesses: federal tax law treats the CPEO as the employer of record for federal employment taxes, which simplifies a lot of compliance complexity for everyone involved.
The catch is that the IRS requires the CPEO to post a federal surety bond. The bond runs to the IRS and guarantees the federal employment taxes the CPEO collects from its clients. The bond starts at $50,000 and can scale up to $1,000,000 based on the CPEO’s federal employment tax liability. The surety has to be on the U.S. Treasury’s list of approved federal carriers, and the bond cannot be collateralized.
If you operate a PEO and are pursuing or maintaining federal certification, you need this bond. We have a full breakdown of how it works on our CPEO bond page.
2. The Medallion Signature Guarantee Bond
Banks, credit unions, broker-dealers, and transfer agents that want to issue medallion signature guarantees (the special stamps that authenticate signatures on securities transfers) have to enroll in one of three programs: STAMP, SEMP, or the NYSE MSP. Enrollment requires a surety bond that caps the institution’s liability for any single guaranteed signature.
Coverage limits run from $100,000 at the low end to $10 million or more. The NYSE MSP has a minimum of $1,000,000. Most community banks and credit unions running STAMP enrollment land somewhere between $500,000 and $2,000,000, sized to the largest single securities transfer the institution is reasonably likely to handle.
This is a specialty financial bond with a narrow market and meaningful underwriting. If you run a financial institution that issues medallion guarantees, see our medallion signature guarantee bond page for the full picture.
3. The Litigation Funding Bond
If you run a consumer litigation funding company (the kind that advances money to plaintiffs against future settlements), the regulatory landscape is shifting fast under your feet. New York’s Consumer Litigation Funding Act takes effect June 17, 2026, requiring every consumer litigation funding company doing business in the state to register, pass character-and-fitness review, and post a surety bond. Vermont, Nevada, and a growing list of other states have similar bond requirements already on the books.
Bond amounts typically start at $50,000. Multi-state funders usually need a separate bond in each regulated state. Specialty financial carriers handle these.
If you fund consumer cases anywhere in the country, this is a bond you should know about. Our litigation funding bond page covers the state-by-state landscape.
4. The TTB Brewer’s Bond
The Federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) used to require every permitted brewery to file a surety bond guaranteeing federal excise tax payments. Most small craft breweries are now exempt thanks to the Craft Beverage Modernization Act, which removed breweries with under $50,000 in annual federal excise tax liability from the bond requirement starting in 2017 (made permanent in 2020).
For production breweries operating above the $50,000 federal excise tax threshold, though, the bond is still required. It is filed on TTB Form 5130.22 and runs in favor of the TTB. The bond amount is tied to expected federal excise tax liability over the longest payment-deferral period the brewery operates under.
If you run a brewery and you have ever wondered “do I still need a TTB bond?” our TTB brewer’s bond page walks through the exemption rules and the math.
5. The Tax Collector Bond
Elected and appointed tax collectors (at the county, township, borough, or municipal level) almost always have to post a public official surety bond before they can take office. The bond guarantees the faithful collection, accounting, and remittance of public tax funds. Bond amounts vary widely depending on the jurisdiction and the volume of taxes the collector handles. Mississippi requires $50,000 for deputy tax collectors. Pennsylvania requires elected tax collectors to file their bonds with the Court of Common Pleas by March 15 each year. Other states set the amount by statute or by the appointing body.
If you are stepping into a tax collector role for the first time, or coming up on a renewal of your term, you need this bond. Our tax collector bond page covers how it works across jurisdictions.
The Common Thread
Three things tie these five bonds together.
They run to specific regulators or programs. The IRS, the U.S. Treasury, state financial regulators, the TTB, county and township governments. These bonds exist because a specific authority decided a financial guarantee was the right backstop for a specific kind of business activity.
They cluster in markets that general surety agencies sometimes do not serve well. Federal bonds, financial bonds, and specialty regulatory bonds tend to be written by a narrower set of carriers than standard commercial bonds. Working with an agency that already has the relationships and the underwriting playbooks for these markets saves real time.
They start at $50,000 or higher. These are not small-ticket bonds. If you are the business that needs one, you are not buying a $5,000 notary bond and moving on with your day. The bond is a real component of your compliance and risk profile.
If You Need One of These Bonds
We have been writing surety bonds since 1971 and we handle all five of the bonds above, along with hundreds of other specialty bonds we did not have room for here. For a deeper explanation of how surety bonds work in general, see our guide to what a surety bond is. For a specific quote on any of the bonds listed here, request a free quote online or call us at 800-333-7800.
