Opening an agency, or growing your rent roll? Professional indemnity for real estate agencies.

New South Wales. The state sets both the rule and the minimum. It reaches every licence class, so real estate agents, stock and station agents, and strata managing agents are all caught. It applies whether a person or a company holds the licence.

Tasmania. The rule applies to a licensed property agent carrying on business. The Property Agents Board sets the figures in the table and can change them itself, so they are worth checking each year. Property representatives, the salespeople rather than the licensees, are not caught.

Northern Territory. An agent must not carry on business without an approved indemnity insurance policy. The Agents Licensing Board approves the policy and may attach conditions to that approval. An agent employed by another agent is exempt while that job lasts, so the duty sits with the agency.

Queensland. The scheme does not require it today, though the law lets a regulation add a requirement without new legislation.

Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, and the ACT. The regulator in each of the four keeps a discretionary power to attach conditions to an individual licence. Your contracts, franchise agreements, and professional body memberships are a separate question from the licence.

An agency licensed in more than one state has to meet the rule in each of them. A group can meet its head office state's rule and miss the one it expanded into. Work your group does under its New South Wales licence has to meet the New South Wales rule, even when the head office sits in Queensland. So we start with every state your agency holds a licence in, then look for a policy that meets each rule and fits what your agency takes on.

Sales. A property is advertised with a floor area, zoning, permitted use, or inclusion that turns out to be wrong, and the buyer says they paid on the strength of it. A vendor sells on your appraisal or market opinion, then says the figure cost them money. A disclosure is missed, or a material fact about the property is not passed on, and the sale unwinds or a claim follows.

Property management. A bond is not lodged, is lodged late, or is released to the wrong party. A repair is reported and not actioned, and the damage grows until the owner faces a bill they say should have been a call-out. An entry notice requirement is not met, or a landlord's instructions are not followed or not recorded. A tenant is approved without the reference checks the management agreement said would be done. The claim comes from the owner, the tenant, or both.

Strata and community title management. Levies are struck on the wrong basis, or a maintenance obligation is missed. A general meeting is run in a way that is later challenged, or a lot owner says advice given to the committee caused them a loss. In strata, the person complaining is often one of many owners with the same complaint.

In each case the loss is financial. It comes from what you said, wrote, calculated, or failed to do. The real estate wording we place excludes injury and property damage unless it arises directly out of a breach of a professional duty in providing your professional services. Other injury and property damage sits with public liability, so an agency generally needs both policies. Public liability versus professional indemnity shows where the line falls between them.

Cover for a scam payment is a cyber insurance question. On some of the cyber policies we place it is built in. On others it is an optional section, or one that can be left off, and at least one cyber policy we place has no scam-payment cover at all.

The same real estate wording excludes valuations, but it still covers a comparative market appraisal, or an estimate or opinion of a selling price, as long as it is in writing and says it is not a valuation. Mortgage broking, legal advice, and the property management of a shopping centre with more than ten shops are outside it. So is a failure to inspect, access, sight, or review a property for a report or assessment you prepared.

If you run a franchised office, a claim against your franchisor for its vicarious liability, meaning it is held liable for your acts, errors or omissions, is covered under that wording as if it were made against you.

Once we know where you hold a licence, three more things decide whether a policy fits your agency.

Whether the limit is per claim or shared. Some limits apply to each claim. Others are shared by every claim in the same policy period. Property management makes the difference matter, because several tenancy or repair complaints running at once can use up a shared limit before the next one arrives.

Whether the policy describes the work you do. A sales office picks up property management, or a property management book picks up a handful of strata schemes. An agent adds commercial work to residential, or takes on marketing for a development project. Each one changes the risk the policy has to answer.

When a late claim is answered. Professional indemnity pays a claim under the policy in force when the claim is first made against you and notified to the insurer, not the one in force when you did the work. In an agency, a complaint about a sale or a tenancy can surface a long time after settlement. How limits and timing work across every profession is on the main Professional Indemnity Insurance page.

When you sell or close the agency, run-off cover keeps claims about past work answered for a fixed term after the policy is cancelled. There is no run-off requirement in New South Wales. Buying it is a commercial decision, and usually a sound one. It is typically bought for 12 months, 3 years, or 7 years. As a general indication, 12 months costs about the same as the last year's renewal premium, and 7 years roughly 2.5 times it. It is covered in depth in what happens to your professional indemnity cover when you switch insurers or stop work.

That agency had $300,000 of turnover, a $1 million limit and a $10,000 excess. It is one agency's figure, and yours depends on your own work, limit and excess.

When a client, a buyer, a tenant or a lot owner says your agency cost them money and the policy is one we look after, one of our specialist claims managers runs the claim with the insurer. Your broker stays across it too, so someone who knows your agency's work is watching how it goes. The claims manager follows up the insurer and argues the point where the policy and the evidence support a different outcome. The chasing sits with us rather than with your property managers, and we explain what is happening at each step.