The Answer in 60 Seconds

When a tender asks a services firm for public liability, work injury compensation and professional indemnity cover, the buyer is protecting itself against the liabilities a supplier's work brings into its business - and making sure its supplier can pay its own share. Each cover answers a different one. Public liability pays the sums an insured becomes legally liable to pay for accidental injury to people or damage to property (Etiqa's public liability wording). Work injury compensation matters to the buyer directly: under section 13 of the Work Injury Compensation Act 2019, where the buyer contracts out work it has undertaken in its own trade, it can be directed to compensate your injured employee and then recover it from you. Professional indemnity answers claims that your professional work or advice was in breach of duty - the risk public liability leaves out. The limit to know: each policy answers your legal liability, not every promise your contract makes. In SYT Consultants v QBE Insurance [2022] SGHC 251, a professional indemnity policy did not respond to liability the insured had taken on by agreement and had not shown would have attached without it.

The Sourced Detail

Public liability: injury and damage around your work

An insurer's own wording sets out what this cover does: it indemnifies the insured against "All sums which the insured shall become legally liable to pay for compensation in respect of (1) accidental bodily injury to or illness of any person (2) accidental loss of or damage to property" (Etiqa). For a buyer that lets your people onto its premises, into its events or in front of its customers, it is the evidence that an injury or damage arising from your work is met by your insurer.

Work injury compensation: the buyer's own exposure

Where a business contracts out work in the course of its trade, the Commissioner may direct it to fulfil the employer's obligations under the Act to a contractor's employee injured in that work, at a place where it undertook the work or under its control or management; it then pays as if it were the employer, and is entitled to be indemnified by the contractor (section 13). MOM gives main contractors the same advice in plain words: "Instead, you should ensure that each of your sub-contractors buy insurance to cover their own employees" (MOM). The Act covers every employee under a contract of service whatever the salary (MOM), which is why the request reaches office-based firms too.

Professional indemnity: the risk public liability leaves out

The same public liability wording excludes "any legal liability incurred by the principals and/or professional consultants and/or their authorized representatives, which is indemnifiable under a professional indemnity insurance policy and/or product liability insurance policy" (Etiqa). A loss your client suffers because of your advice, design or work is a professional indemnity matter. In the policy the court read in SYT Consultants v QBE, the cover was for "any legal liability to pay Compensation ... arising from any civil liability resulting from a Claim for breach of professional duty in the conduct of Your Business".

Back to back - and where it stops

A buyer's contract can pass liability back to its supplier, through an indemnity or hold harmless clause; the supplier's insurance is what is meant to answer it. The insurance answers legal liability, not every promise. Etiqa's public liability wording excludes "liability assumed by the insured by agreement and which would not have attached in the absence of such agreement". In SYT Consultants, the professional indemnity policy covered contract and duty-of-care claims but "does not extend to cover any liability assumed by You under any express warranty, guarantee, representation, hold harmless agreement, indemnity contract or similar agreement unless such liability would attach in the absence of any such agreement"; the court found the insured "has not proven that liability under the Consent Judgment would have attached in the absence of the Settlement Agreement" (at [78]), and the claim failed "on this basis alone" (at [82]). An indemnity signed in a tender that goes beyond your legal liability can sit outside your cover.

Common Mistakes

  1. Assuming public liability covers your advice or work product. The wording above leaves that to professional indemnity.
  2. Signing the tender's indemnity without reading it beside your policies. What the contract promises and what the policy answers are two different lists.
  3. Treating work injury cover as a compliance box. Under section 13, it is the buyer's own exposure.
  4. Sending one document for three covers. Each cover answers a different liability, and the buyer checks each.

What This Means for Your Business

A tender's insurance list is the buyer's map of the ways your work can cost it money. Match each item to a policy you hold, read the contract's indemnity clause against those policies before you sign, and close any gap with your broker before the tender closes.

Questions to Ask Your Adviser

  • Do our public liability and professional indemnity policies between them answer each liability this tender's contract names?
  • Does the contract's indemnity clause ask us to accept liability our policies would not cover?
  • Does our work injury compensation policy cover every employee who will work on this contract?
  • Can the policies name the buyer, or extend to it, if the contract asks?

Related Information

Published 27 October 2026. Source verified 27 October 2026.