SA’s Building Indemnity Insurance changes: what GCs engaging SA subcontractors need to know

From 10 November 2025, South Australia increased the minimum required cover for Building Indemnity Insurance from $150,000 to $250,000, and raised the domestic building work threshold that triggers the requirement in the first place from $12,000 to $20,000 — both changes prescribed in the Building Work Contractors Regulations. Neither is a huge shift in principle, but both change what a GC actually needs to check when engaging an SA building contractor for residential work.

What Building Indemnity Insurance actually covers

Building Indemnity Insurance in SA is the equivalent of what other states call home warranty or builders warranty insurance — cover that protects a homeowner if the building contractor can’t complete the work or fix defects, typically because they’ve become insolvent, disappeared, or died. It applies to residential building work, and — as of the November 2025 change — kicks in once the value of that work passes $20,000, up from the previous $12,000 threshold.

The two changes, and what each one means in practice

The cover increase, from $150,000 to $250,000 minimum, is about adequacy — the old figure hadn’t kept pace with actual rectification costs on a modern build, so a claim against an underinsured contractor could genuinely fall short of covering the real cost of fixing the problem. For a GC, the practical check is simple: any Building Indemnity Insurance certificate on file for an SA residential job needs to actually show the new $250,000 figure for work happening after the changeover, not a policy still sitting at the old $150,000 limit.

The threshold increase, from $12,000 to $20,000, changes which jobs need the insurance at all. A smaller residential job that would have required Building Indemnity Insurance under the old $12,000 threshold may now sit under the $20,000 bar and not need it — worth checking against the actual scope value rather than assuming every residential job still needs a certificate on file.

Why this is easy to get wrong on a still-transitioning policy

The change only applies to new policies issued from the effective date, so an SA subcontractor’s existing, older Building Indemnity Insurance certificate showing the previous $150,000 limit isn’t automatically invalid — it’s simply a policy issued before the changeover. But $250,000 is the going standard on anything freshly quoted now, and a $150,000 policy is a real coverage gap against that standard even though it was perfectly compliant when it was issued. The practical implication for a GC: don’t assume a Building Indemnity certificate that looks fine on its face (current, not expired) is actually meeting the current standard — check the cover amount against the date it was issued, not just whether it’s still valid.

How Novato handles this

Novato tracks every compliance document — trade licences and insurance certificates alike, Building Indemnity Insurance included — against your project’s own requirements and timeline. The same project-timeline expiry check that flags a trade licence expiring before your project ends applies to insurance-type documents too, so a certificate that’s current but sitting at the old cover amount doesn’t just quietly pass a "not expired" check without anyone looking at what it actually covers.