The City of St. Louis has brokered a new Gateway Surety Bond Program designed to help minority- and women-owned construction companies obtain surety bonds that normally do not qualify based on standard underwriting guidelines.
Howard Hayes, director of Minority Business Development & Compliance for the St. Louis Development Corporation, developed the program with Community Insurance Center, a division of Inner-City Underwriting Agency.
“Surety bonds are required for all public financed projects. Most minority and women owned construction firms can’t bid on these projects because they don’t qualify for surety bonding,” Hayes said.
“This inability to access financing and bonding is consistently identified by minority and women owned construction firms as the major barriers preventing growth and development. St. Louis intends to change this.”
The new bond program will work closely with the new Contractor Loan Fund created by St. Louis Development Corporation along with its regional partners last year. Together, the programs expect to increase the number of minority- and women-owned construction companies that can qualify for both bank financing and surety bonds.
Community Insurance Center has implemented similar programs in Illinois for the City of Chicago, Illinois Tollway and several other public and private organizations. It has opened an office in St. Louis and moved the firm’s Surety Practice leader, Gina Eanes-Banks, to manage the new office and implement the new bond program.
More information about the program will be released shortly. In the meantime, contractors interested in applying to the program should email Matthew Cooper at SuretyBonds@CommunityInsCenter.net or call 314-551-9080.
