Does your licence actually require insurance?
In short
- Most NSW occupational licences carry no insurance condition at all — the ticket is issued to the person doing the work, not to the business that trades.
- A small number of licences carry a hard, specifically worded condition, and the wording can be narrow enough that an ordinary policy does not satisfy it.
- Registered professions sit in a third regime again: insurance is not a form to file, it is a condition of being allowed to practise at all.
Ask five licence holders whether their ticket requires insurance and expect five confident, contradictory answers. All five can be right, because NSW does not run one rule for occupational licences — it runs three, and which one applies depends on exactly what kind of licence is being asked about.
This page sets out the three regimes and how to tell which one a particular licence sits in. The detail for any one occupation belongs on that occupation’s own page; this is the map that explains why the answers differ so much between neighbours.
Regime one: no condition at all
A high-risk work licence — the ticket a scaffolder, rigger, crane operator or dogger holds — is issued to a person to do a class of work safely. It says nothing about insurance, and it is not meant to: the licence tests competence, not commercial arrangements.
Most building and trade licences work the same way. The ticket authorises a class of work; whoever employs, engages or contracts the licence holder is the one with an insurance question, and that question is answered by the contract or by a scheme, not by the licence.
Regime two: a named condition on specific licences
A minority of SafeWork NSW licences depart from that pattern, and they depart in specific, different directions rather than as a group. A demolition licence application requires a public liability insurance certificate that names the business activity as demolition — a general certificate that does not say so is the wrong document.
An asbestos removal licence application requires a workers compensation certificate where the applicant has employees and is not exempt, and says nothing about public liability at all. Two neighbouring high-risk licences under the same regulator, and the condition each one carries answers a different question.
Regime three: a bar on practising, not a form to file
Registered health practitioners sit outside the licensing model entirely. A registered practitioner must not practise the profession they are registered in unless appropriate professional indemnity insurance arrangements are in force, and a lapse has to be notified to the National Board.
Property agents carry a comparable weight from a different direction. Section 22 of the Property and Stock Agents Act 2002 makes professional indemnity insurance a condition of every licence, stated in the Act itself rather than left to guidance.
Why the difference is not arbitrary
The pattern is not random once the underlying exposure is considered. Where a licence holder works for a business that a client or principal deals with and contracts with directly, the contract is usually the mechanism that requires cover — the licence does not need to duplicate it.
Where the public deals with the licence holder’s activity directly and at scale — demolition next to occupied buildings, a registered practitioner treating a patient, an agent holding a client’s deposit — the regulator has judged that a contract term is not a reliable enough backstop, and has written the requirement into the licence or the registration itself.
Questions
- My trade ticket does not mention insurance. Does that mean I do not need any?
- It means the licence itself carries no condition. It does not mean nothing else requires cover — a head contractor’s contract, a Home Building Compensation obligation on residential work, or ordinary commercial exposure can all require it even where the ticket is silent.
- Why do demolition and asbestos removal get treated so differently when both are SafeWork NSW high-risk licences?
- The two applications ask for different documents because they address different exposures — demolition work happening around people and property that are not the demolisher’s own, and asbestos removal work where the risk sits with the workers doing it. The condition follows the exposure rather than the regulator.
- Does this three-regime pattern apply outside NSW?
- This page is written against NSW licensing and registration sources. Other states and territories run their own building and trade licensing schemes and can attach different conditions to comparable work, so the licensing body in the relevant state is the one to check for that jurisdiction.
Sources
- SafeWork NSW — unrestricted demolition licence — States the application requires a public liability insurance certificate with the business activity listed as demolition.
- SafeWork NSW — Class A asbestos removal licence — States the application requires a workers compensation certificate where the applicant has employees and is not exempt. No public liability requirement is listed.
- Ahpra — professional indemnity insurance arrangements — Publisher of the fact sheet stating a registered health practitioner must not practise unless appropriate professional indemnity insurance arrangements are in force, and that a lapse must be notified to the National Board.
- NSW Government — professional indemnity insurance information sheet (property agents) — Confirms that under section 22 of the Property and Stock Agents Act 2002 it is a condition of every licence that the holder be insured under a policy of professional indemnity insurance.