Insurables — Australian business risk, sourced and dated

Real estate agents: professional indemnity requirements in Western Australia

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

Data as at

Verified for Western Australia

  • Licence liability condition: No professional indemnity requirement for real estate agents. A full-text reading of the Act found no substantive PI obligation. Protection runs through the REAL ESTATE AND BUSINESS AGENTS FIDELITY GUARANTEE FUND, which reimburses people who suffer loss of trust money or trust property through the criminal or fraudulent actions of a licensed agent. AND NOTE A TRAP: Western Australia DOES require professional indemnity insurance — but of SETTLEMENT AGENTS, the conveyancers, under the separate Settlement Agents Act 1981 (WA), where a triennial certificate holder must at all times be insured under the Commissioner's Master Policy Agreement. Two property professions, one state, opposite answers. 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. WA · effective 2026-08-24 Western Australia Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: None for a real estate agent. A settlement agent must hold a current certificate of insurance under the Commissioner's Master Policy at all times. WA · effective 2026-08-24 Western Australia Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: The Consumer Protection division of the WA department, under the Real Estate and Business Agents Act 1978 (WA). WA · effective 2026-08-24 Western 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