Insurables — Australian business risk, sourced and dated

Real estate agents: professional indemnity requirements in South Australia

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

Data as at

Verified for South Australia

  • Licence liability condition: No professional indemnity requirement — the phrase does not appear anywhere in the Act. South Australia runs a statutory INDEMNITY FUND maintained by the Commissioner, comprising interest paid by banks on trust accounts and money recovered in relation to a fiduciary default. THE THING NOBODY EXPLAINS: Australia protects the clients of real estate agents in TWO fundamentally different ways, and which one you live under decides whether you need professional indemnity insurance at all. Some jurisdictions require the AGENT to carry PI. Others require no insurance whatsoever and instead run a STATUTORY FUND — financed by the interest earned on agents' trust accounts — that compensates clients directly when an agent misuses trust money. New South Wales, Tasmania and the Northern Territory take the insurance route. Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and the ACT take the fund route. Queensland sits between them. An agent moving state does not merely face a different limit; they face a different mechanism. SA · effective 2026-08-24 South Australia Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: None. SA · effective 2026-08-24 South Australia Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: Consumer and Business Services, under the Land Agents Act 1994 (SA). SA · effective 2026-08-24 South Australia 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