When asbestos turned up in mulch spread across Sydney's Rozelle Parklands in January 2024, it triggered the largest criminal investigation the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority (NSW EPA) has ever undertaken, eventually spanning dozens of sites including schools, parks, hospitals and train stations. Less than two years later, in November 2025, tremolite asbestos was found in imported coloured craft sand sold in Australian classrooms, forcing more than 450 schools and childcare centres to close. Both cases sit against an asbestos backdrop the federal government has quantified: an estimated six million tonnes of this now ageing substance remains in Australia's built environment, according to the Asbestos National Strategic Plan 2024–2030. That's despite a national ban on all types of asbestos back in 2003.
For brokers, that legacy exposure can create a major unaddressed coverage issue for many clients, including tradies and property owners. It's a gap that a specialist Perth-based underwriting agency says it has now moved to close.
Edge Underwriting has launched what its managing director, David Jones (pictured), described as a market-first: standalone liability cover for tradespeople and property owners who accidentally disturb asbestos while carrying out otherwise unrelated work, even where they hold no asbestos removal licence. The new product sits alongside separate, higher-limit cover Edge already offers licensed asbestos removal contractors carrying out planned removal, remediation, transportation and disposal work. Likely for the first time, this gives brokers a specialist option to place regardless of whether their client is licensed for asbestos work or not.
"Asbestos is an exclusion under every standard liability policy and it's a treaty exclusion under most insurance treaties - even most Lloyd's syndicates," Jones said to IB at the recent Underwriting Agencies Council (UAC) Market Exchange in Adelaide. That exclusion typically extends to defence costs as well, meaning a contractor facing an asbestos-related claim can be left to fund their own legal defence even if the claim is ultimately unsuccessful.
Jones said around four or five insurers currently offer asbestos cover in the Australian market, split between occurrence-based and claims-made triggers but that cover has traditionally been reserved for licensed asbestos removalists. It's the much larger population of tradespeople who never intended to work with asbestos at all who have been left without options.
"There are a lot of tradies, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, people doing renovations on houses, who accidentally come across asbestos. It's in the roof, in the wall linings, and they have no cover whatsoever," Jones said. "They generally can't buy the cover because they're not licensed asbestos removalists."
That’s despite the fact that exposure is relatively common rather than exceptional. Asbestos-containing materials can still be found in flooring adhesives, wall linings, roof sheeting, switchboard backing panels, pipe lagging and dozens of other building components installed prior to the 1990s. A contractor drilling into a wall, replacing a switchboard or repairing storm damage on an older property can unknowingly disturb material they had no reason to suspect was there.
Jones said the product, offering $2 million in cover, responds to two distinct exposures: property damage or contamination from a release of fibres and bodily injury claims - including allegations that someone developed asbestosis from particles disturbed during the work. Australia recorded 684 mesothelioma diagnoses in 2024 and 688 deaths in 2023, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare - figures that underline how the long latency of asbestos-related illness means claims can emerge years after the triggering incident, making policy continuity and timely notification critical considerations for brokers advising affected clients.
Jones was clear that the product wasn't developed speculatively. "It was inquiries from brokers," he said. "A lot of times they'd get a call saying they'd been to the whole market and couldn't get cover because the tradie wasn't a licensed asbestos removalist - no one would back them. That was the catalyst for developing the product."
That broker-led demand points to a wider issue: with a substantial share of Australia's pre-1990 building stock still standing, incidental asbestos exposure is not a marginal risk confined to demolition or remediation work. It is a routine hazard across renovation, maintenance and infrastructure work - one that standard liability wordings from major commercial insurers explicitly exclude, leaving contractors and their brokers with no fallback unless a purpose-built alternative exists.
For brokers with contractor clients working on pre-2004 buildings, the question worth raising now is a simple one: has asbestos cover been confirmed, or merely assumed?
