Insurables — Australian business risk, sourced and dated

Architects: professional indemnity requirements in New South Wales

Cover for legal liability arising from professional advice or services, written on a claims-made basis.

Data as at

Verified for New South Wales

  • Licence liability condition: Yes, for architects in the practising category. The NSW Architects Code of Professional Conduct requires an architect to maintain a policy of professional indemnity insurance appropriate for the architectural services they provide. The Board also recognises exemption and exclusion agreements — for example where an architect is on parental leave, employed by government or a university, or practising only overseas — so the requirement tracks whether the person is actually practising in NSW rather than merely holding registration. The instrument is named so the position can be checked; the commencement date of this particular requirement was not separately traced, so the date on this fact is the date it was confirmed current rather than the date it began. NSW · effective 2026-08-24 NSW Architects Registration Board · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: Evidence is required at initial registration, at registration renewal, at annual reporting, and on application for reinstatement to the Register — or, in place of evidence, a completed exemption or exclusion agreement with supporting documentation. Four separate touchpoints makes this among the more actively policed insurance conditions of any occupation on this site. The instrument is named so the position can be checked; the commencement date of this particular requirement was not separately traced, so the date on this fact is the date it was confirmed current rather than the date it began. NSW · effective 2026-08-24 NSW Architects Registration Board · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: The NSW Architects Registration Board, under the Architects Act 2003 (NSW), supported by the Architects Regulation 2017 and the NSW Architects Code of Professional Conduct 2017. The title "architect" is protected: the constraint is on who may use the name, not merely on who may draw a building. NSW · effective 2026-08-24 NSW Architects Registration Board · 2026-08-24

What contracts commonly ask for

Principals and head contractors set their own insurance requirements, and those are frequently higher than a licence condition. The requirement that binds is the higher of the two, and both have to be read from the actual document.

What this cover costs

This site publishes no cost benchmark for this cover. A benchmark needs a real sample of documents, and none is published until the sample is large enough to compute a median honestly. A benchmark from a handful of policies is a guess with a decimal point.

Sources