Texas Private Investigator Bond

We could not find a current statute or DPS rule that sets $10,000 — or any fixed dollar figure — as a Texas investigations company bond amount. The number that is actually written into law is the insurance minimum in Occ. Code §1702.124: $100,000 per occurrence for bodily injury/property damage, $50,000 per occurrence for personal injury, capped at $200,000 total aggregate. DPS processes this through its own Certificate of Liability Insurance, form PSB-05. If you have seen "$10,000" quoted elsewhere, ask the source for the statute or DPS rule citation — we could not locate one, and we checked.

Both instruments are still named in the statute, but they are not treated the same today. Occ. Code §1702.123 requires a company to keep on file whichever of the two — bond or insurance — the chapter requires, and §1702.125 governs how a filed bond terminates (30 days' surety notice to DPS). But §1702.124, titled 'Insurance Requirement,' is the section that actually sets a dollar figure, and DPS's own company-license form, PSB-05, is an insurance certificate with no bond equivalent published alongside it. In practice, essentially every Texas investigations company satisfies Chapter 1702 with the insurance certificate. If you specifically want to file a bond instead, confirm the current amount and acceptance directly with DPS's Private Security Program before you commit — neither the statute nor the published 37 TAC Chapter 35 rules list a bond-amount schedule.

Because Texas used to run one. From 1969 to November 2015, the Texas Comptroller held a dedicated fund — the Private Detectives Surety Bond Trust Account (Fund 0967), created by S.B. 164 of the 61st Legislature — to hold cash or securities that applicants posted as a bond alternative under what are now Occ. Code §§1702.123–.126. The Comptroller's own Manual of Accounts confirms it: 'Fund no longer used and closed November 2015.' A lot of bond-seller content was written before that closure and never got updated. That gap is exactly why we're publishing the current mechanism instead of repeating the old number.

To qualify a Class A investigations company license, Occ. Code §1702.114 (implemented by 37 TAC §35.121) requires the qualifying manager to show one of three things before the application date: three consecutive years of investigative experience as an employee or owner of an investigations company, a bachelor's degree in criminal justice or a related field, or a bachelor's degree plus twelve months of related experience. There is no bond-based shortcut around this — it is an experience or education requirement, separate from the insurance certificate.

It is not a grace period followed by a warning letter. Under Occ. Code §1702.123(a)-(b), a company license holder must keep the required bond and insurance on file at all times, and the commission 'shall immediately suspend' the license of a holder who lets it lapse — the suspension is automatic, not discretionary. You can get the suspension rescinded if you provide proof the coverage is back in force within 10 days (§1702.123(c)). Miss that window, and reinstatement requires a full new application with a proper bond, insurance certificate, or both attached (§1702.123(d)) — plus the commission can deny that application for the same reasons it could deny an original license.

Yes, and this is the detail most single-topic pages miss. Occ. Code §§1702.123–1702.125 apply to 'a company license holder' generally — they do not carve out separate dollar amounts for investigations companies versus security services contractors. A Class A (PI), Class B (guard), or Class C (combined) license all file the same $100,000/$50,000/$200,000 PSB-05 insurance certificate. If you are licensing a combined investigations-and-guard operation, you file one certificate that covers both scopes, not two. See our Texas security guard bond coverage for the guard-only side of this same rule.