Insurables — Australian business risk, sourced and dated

Building inspectors: 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, and it is enforced with a penalty. A certifier in NSW must hold professional indemnity insurance complying with Part 3 of the Building and Development Certifiers Regulation 2020. The policy must cover all liabilities from the time the person first became registered, protect against claims of professional negligence or omission as defined by the Regulation, and leave no gaps in coverage unless registration is suspended and no certification work is being done. Carrying out certification work without adequate insurance carries a fine. The retroactive-cover requirement is unusual and stricter than most occupations face. 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 Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: To maintain registration, not merely to obtain it. A certifier must provide proof of professional indemnity insurance in the form of a certificate of currency requested from the insurer on company letterhead. 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 Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: Registration as a certifier under the Building and Development Certifiers Regulation 2020 (NSW), administered by NSW Fair Trading. Note the vocabulary gap: the regulated role is "certifier", so someone searching for a "building inspector licence" in NSW is looking for a title the scheme does not use. NSW · effective 2026-08-24 NSW Government · 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