Nursing agencies: professional indemnity requirements in New South Wales

Verified for New South Wales

• Licence liability condition: No licence condition, because there is no licence. The obligation that does bite is an employer one: most employers in NSW must hold a workers compensation policy unless an exemption applies, and an agency employing or hiring nurses full time, part time or casually is an employer for that purpose. NSW · effective 2026-08-24 Building Commission NSW · 2026-08-13
• Licence evidence required: A workers compensation policy as an employer, and whatever the health service being supplied into demands under its contract — which in practice is usually more than the law requires. NSW · effective 2026-08-24 Building Commission NSW · 2026-08-13
• Licensing body: No separate licence exists for a nursing agency in New South Wales. The individual nurses supplied are registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia through Ahpra and carry that registration’s own insurance requirement; the agency as a business is not separately licensed. NSW · effective 2026-08-24 Building Commission NSW · 2026-08-13

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 the limit figure on a certificate means
• Cover for the principal for your work
• When a certificate falls short of the contract

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

• Building Commission NSW — Building Commission NSW — building and trade licences
• State labour hire licensing authorities — Labour hire licensing schemes