Professional Indemnity Insurance for Real Estate Agents: Why Do You Need It?

Being a real estate agent means you have an exciting and dynamic job – you can be your own boss, earn a great income and have a flexible work schedule. However, there are certain unique risks that you face which can leave you vulnerable. To give you peace of mind, you should ensure that you have professional indemnity insurance in place to protect yourself financially against claims from third parties.

What is professional indemnity insurance?

Professional indemnity insurance is designed to protect you if a third party suffers a loss as a result of your professional actions. This could be due to an act, error, omission or breach of professional duty. For most professionals providing a service, including real estate agents, you should have indemnity insurance in place to protect against the financial impact of claims. Not only can indemnity insurance cover part of the costs relating to successful claims, it also provides the means to pay for legal bills involved with the claims process.

Why do real estate agents need indemnity insurance?

There are several unique risks that real estate agents are exposed to which places them at a greater risk of indemnity claims. Just some of these risks include:

Negligence – As a real estate agents, you’re open to claims for negligence if you fail to provide due care. For example, accidentally losing client paperwork or confidential information can leave you open to a claim.
Poor property management – You can be held responsible if you don’t manage a rental property appropriately. For example, a claim could occur if you don’t carry out thorough inspections or failed to act when a tenant advised you of a risk.
Breach of contract – When you’re selling a clients’ home, there could be claims that you didn’t perform under the terms of the contact. This is most common where certain time frames haven’t been met as agreed upon.
Misleading clients – Examples of claims for misleading clients could be failing to inform the client of defects in the home, providing incorrect or misleading information about the local area or exaggerating certain features of the home.
Failing to follow procedure – As a real estate agent, you could be accused of breaching your professional duty by not following procedure. An example of this could be accepting an auction bid after the fall of the hammer.

At GSK Insurance Brokers, we provide professional indemnity insurance so you can be confident that your risks are covered. We pride ourselves on our commitment to customer service and we take the time to get to know all your risks for targeted insurance cover. If you’re not sure whether indemnity insurance is right for you, speak with one of our brokers today.

For a professional indemnity insurance quote, speak with the experts at GSK Insurance Brokers today on (08) 9478 1933.

April 24, 2018

By Graham Knight

Founder and Managing Director of GSK Insurance (established in 1981). Graham draws upon more than 50 years’ experience in the insurance industry, working in both insurance and broking across various private, public and government sectors in Australia.