Hawaii Surety BondsNo Secretary of State — Here's Who You File With

The Hawaii Insurance Division, part of the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (DCCA), licenses and regulates the surety insurers and the producers who sell surety bonds in the state. Note the distinction: the Insurance Division oversees the company standing behind your bond, but the entity that actually requires and holds the bond — the obligee — is usually a different body. A contractor bond answers to the Contractors License Board, a dealer bond to the Motor Vehicle Industry Licensing Board, a notary bond to the courts and the Attorney General. When you buy a Hawaii bond you are dealing with two authorities at once, and both matter.

Correct, and it trips up applicants moving from the mainland. Hawaii is one of the few states with no Secretary of State, so there is no single office that catches every bond filing. Instead the filing destination depends on the bond: DCCA’s Professional and Vocational Licensing (PVL) branch takes contractor and motor-vehicle-dealer bonds; the Department of the Attorney General oversees notaries public; the clerk of the circuit court holds a notary’s official bond and the judiciary sets probate and other court bonds; and business registration runs through DCCA’s Business Registration Division (BREG). Filing a bond with the wrong office is the most common delay we see for out-of-state applicants.

A Hawaii notary public must post a $1,000 official surety bond under Hawaii Revised Statutes §456-5. What makes it unusual is the approval path: the bond must be approved by a judge of the circuit court and then deposited with the clerk of the circuit court for the judicial circuit where the notary resides — not mailed to a state licensing desk. The Department of the Attorney General oversees the notary program itself. Because the face amount is only $1,000, the premium is small and no credit check is involved; the full notary process and current pricing are on our Hawaii notary bond page.

Hawaii motor vehicle dealers are licensed through the Motor Vehicle Industry Licensing Board, administered by DCCA’s PVL branch, and the required bond is not a single statewide figure. The amount scales with the type of dealer license (new, used, or motorcycle/scooter) and with sales volume, so a low-volume used-car dealer and a high-volume franchised new-car dealer post very different bonds. Because the tiers move with your license class and monthly sales, the honest answer is that the amount is set case by case — our Hawaii auto dealer bond page walks through how each classification is quoted rather than quoting one number that would be wrong for most dealers.

Because Hawaii doesn’t have a conventional sales tax. It uses the General Excise Tax (GET), a broad tax on business gross income administered by the Hawaii Department of Taxation, which is structured differently from the retail sales-and-use taxes that drive tax-bond requirements on the mainland. So if you are used to posting a sales-tax surety bond in another state, that specific bond generally has no direct Hawaii equivalent. It is a good example of why copying another state’s bond checklist to Hawaii produces phantom requirements — the underlying tax and licensing framework simply isn’t the same.

Neither is a fixed catalog price. A probate or fiduciary bond is set by the probate judge in the Hawaii State Judiciary based on the value of the estate or the assets the personal representative will control, so the amount is driven by the specific case. A vehicle title (bonded title) surety is tied to the value of the vehicle and is handled through the county motor vehicle registration process — Hawaii registers vehicles at the county level across Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, Maui, and Kauaʻi counties. In both cases we quote once the controlling figure — estate value or vehicle value — is known; the mechanics live on our Hawaii probate bond and vehicle title bond pages.

Yes. The $1,000 notary bond requires no credit check at all. For license bonds like the motor vehicle dealer bond and contractor bonds, applicants with strong credit typically pay a premium of roughly 1–3% of the bond amount annually, while applicants with weaker credit or a claims history can still be approved through specialty carriers at a higher rate — often 5–10%. Court and probate bonds with weak credit are frequently written with collateral. Because Hawaii bonds range from a $1,000 notary bond to five- and six-figure dealer and estate bonds, the dollar premium varies enormously; request a quote and we place it with the right carrier for your profile.