Renewal season for most practices means one question: has the premium gone up. That is the least consequential thing about the policy.
Professional indemnity cover for a registered migration agent is not a commercial risk decision that happens to be encouraged. It sits in three instruments simultaneously, and if any one of them stops describing your practice accurately, the consequences are not limited to an uninsured claim.
Three instruments, one obligation
OMARA's guidance on practice management duties sets out how they interlock.
Section 27 of the Code requires an agent either to hold professional indemnity insurance of a kind prescribed by regulation 6B of the Migration Agents Regulations 1998, or to be a director, employee or member of an organisation that holds such insurance.
Section 292B of the Act makes it a registration requirement. An applicant for registration cannot be registered unless they hold the prescribed insurance.
Regulation 6B sets the specification: professional indemnity insurance for at least $250,000, held by the individual, or by an organisation of which the individual is a director, employee or member.
The practical significance of that stack is worth stating directly. A gap in cover is not only a breach of section 27 — it goes to whether you satisfy a condition of being registered at all. That is a different order of problem from an ordinary insurance lapse, and it is why the review is worth doing months before the policy expires rather than in the week it does.
$250,000 is a floor, not a benchmark
Regulation 6B prescribes a minimum. It does not represent a considered view of what a migration practice's exposure looks like.
Set that number against the actual shape of a claim. A refused application where the fault is yours can carry the visa application charge, the client's onward costs, the cost of a review, and, where a substantive right has been lost — a bridging visa that ceases, an age threshold crossed, a nomination that cannot be remade — consequences no fee refund touches. Defence costs are frequently the larger component, and whether they sit inside or outside your limit is a question with a specific answer in your policy schedule.
The review question is not "do I meet $250,000". It is "what would the two worst matters in my current caseload cost if they went wrong, and does the policy respond to that".
The cover-by-employer route, and its condition
Section 27 lets you satisfy the duty through an organisation's policy rather than your own. This is the route most employed and contracted agents rely on, and the definition it depends on changed with the current Code.
OMARA's summary of the changes records that regulation 6B was amended to include consultants, independent contractors, and persons engaged as volunteers within the definition of "employee" — clarifying that RMAs working under those arrangements may be covered by their employer's professional indemnity insurance. The Code adopts the same expanded definition.
That is a genuine widening, and it is also the thing most worth verifying rather than assuming.
Are you actually inside it?
Being described as a contractor by the firm you work with does not establish that the firm's insurer treats you as covered. Three questions settle it, and all three want a documentary answer:
- Does the policy wording extend to consultants, contractors and volunteers, or only to employees in the narrower employment sense?
- Are you within the class the policy names — by role, by named-insured schedule, or by a definition broad enough to include your arrangement?
- Is the cover still in force, and will you know if it is not? An agent relying on an employer's policy is relying on a renewal decision someone else makes.
An agent operating under more than one arrangement — employed by a firm, plus a handful of private clients — needs to establish which work each policy responds to. Work outside the covered entity is usually outside the cover.
What changes in the year invalidate last year's answer
The policy was underwritten against a description of your practice. The review is really a test of whether the description still holds.
- New work types. Moving into ART review work, sponsorship compliance, or business and investment visas changes the risk profile the insurer priced.
- Headcount and structure. New RMAs, contractors, offshore staff, or a change of entity all bear on who is covered.
- Volume. A caseload that has doubled is a different exposure at the same limit.
- Technology. Adopting AI-assisted drafting, or a new case management system, is worth raising with the broker rather than discovering its treatment at claim time.
- Cyber. A privacy or ransomware incident is generally not a professional indemnity claim. If nobody has checked whether a separate cyber policy exists, assume it does not.
The retroactive question
Migration matters generate long tails. An error made preparing an application may not surface until a refusal two years later, or a cancellation years after that.
Most professional indemnity policies operate on a claims-made basis: they respond to claims made during the period of insurance, subject to a retroactive date, rather than to work done during it. Two things follow. Changing insurer without carrying the retroactive date forward can strand years of past work. And ceasing practice without run-off cover leaves the tail uninsured precisely when you have no policy to renew.
Neither is exotic, and both are easier to fix before renewal than after.
A lapse becomes a notification problem
If cover fails and your registration is affected, the Code converts an insurance issue into a series of deadlines.
Section 29 requires written notice to the Authority within 14 days of becoming aware of a change to your personal circumstances reasonably likely to have a negative impact on the Authority's satisfaction that you are a person of integrity and a fit and proper person.
Sections 30 and 31 go further. If registration is suspended, or if you become aware it is reasonably likely to lapse, you must give written notice to all current clients, to the Department where a matter is pending, and to any review authority where a matter is pending before it. Section 31 sets the timing: no later than 14 days before the day, or as soon as practicable where you learn of it later.
Those notices have prescribed content — the status of each client's matter, whether it will be allocated to another agent and their details, or how the client can otherwise obtain assistance, plus a statement of client money received, paid out and remaining, and a statement about the return of documents.
Which is the real argument for reviewing early. A cover problem found in July is an administrative task. The same problem found in the week of expiry is a client-by-client notification exercise on every open matter.
The annual review checklist
- Does the policy meet regulation 6B — at least $250,000, held by you or an organisation you are a director, employee or member of?
- Are defence costs inside or outside the limit?
- What is the retroactive date, and does it cover your earliest exposed work?
- Is there an excess you could actually fund on each claim?
- If you rely on an employer's policy, do you hold written confirmation that your arrangement is covered?
- Do the policy's described activities match what the practice now does?
- Are contractors and offshore staff within the insured definition?
- Is there run-off cover if you stopped practising?
- Is cyber covered anywhere, or assumed?
- Does anyone other than you know the renewal date?
Keep the answers on file. Under section 32 you must respond to Authority requests promptly and completely, and evidence of insurance is a routine thing to be asked for — our guide to file note requirements covers the wider discipline of being able to produce what you assert.
Where a system helps
Insurance lapses are calendar failures. The renewal date lives in one person's inbox, the certificate lives in a folder, and nothing connects either to the work that depends on them.
The fix is treating cover as practice infrastructure: a renewal date with an owner and an escalation, the certificate stored where the practice can find it rather than where it was filed, and a caseload view that can tell you, quickly, how many open matters a notification obligation would touch.
LodgeHQ keeps practice obligations and matters in the same place, alongside CPD tracking and the rest of the annual cycle. If you are building a practice from scratch, our guide to starting a migration agency covers where insurance sits in the sequence.
Verify before you rely on it
Policy wordings differ, the prescribed minimum can change, and nothing here is a substitute for reading your own schedule. Check the current sources: OMARA's Code of Conduct page, the prescribed Code, and the Regulations on the Federal Register.
This is general information for migration practices, not legal, financial or insurance advice. Discuss cover, limits and exclusions with a broker who understands migration work, and get advice on any circumstance that might become a claim.