Yes, the Territory has a scheme.
It’s called the Fidelity Fund Certificate.

Residential building cover in the Northern Territory is required, and it is issued in the form of a Fidelity Fund Certificate. It is similar to the home warranty insurance cover that operates in other states. The governing legislation is the Building Act 1993 (NT). The certificate is issued by the Fidelity Fund NT, and the Building Practitioners Board is the registration authority. Because the settings below are drawn from the NT government and Fidelity Fund NT web pages as at mid 2026, confirm each figure against the current NT source before relying on it.

Builders (and developers) must hold residential building cover for prescribed residential building work valued over $12,000 [verify]. A builder must obtain a fidelity fund certificate for every job that includes prescribed residential building work, must hold it before getting a building permit for that work, and before demanding any payment from an owner. In other words the certificate is not a formality you attend to later, it sits ahead of the permit and ahead of the first dollar.

What counts as a new home here

For the purposes of the scheme, new homes include duplexes, units in complexes up to three storeys in height (excluding undercroft or underground parking levels), and extensions or renovations to those buildings [verify]. If you are unsure whether a particular job is prescribed residential building work, confirm it against the current NT definition rather than assuming.

When the cover responds

The certificate is last-resort in structure. It covers owners if the builder becomes bankrupt, dies, disappears, or has their registration cancelled by the Building Practitioners Board. It does not answer an ordinary dispute with a solvent, contactable builder, so it is worth being plain with clients that the certificate is not a general guarantee.

Cover and caps

• Non-completion: the certificate covers the cost of transitioning to a new builder to complete unfinished work, and this non-completion cover is capped at 20 per cent of the contract price [verify].
• Structural defects: it covers rectification of structural defects for six years after completion [verify].
• Total maximum cover: the total maximum cover available is $200,000, which applies to non-completion and defective work claims combined [verify].

A note on currency: the $12,000 threshold, the three-storey definition, the 20 per cent non-completion cap, the six-year structural period and the $200,000 total are all drawn from NT.GOV.AU and the Fidelity Fund NT web pages read as at mid 2026, and each is marked [verify]. These settings change, and this content is not from an internal knowledge base, so confirm every figure against the current NT source before relying on it. None of this is legal or financial advice.

Owner-builders

Owner-builders must hold a fidelity fund certificate to cover future owners for building defects. Cover is only available after the property is sold or transferred, and only if the owner-builder becomes bankrupt, dies, disappears, or has their registration cancelled [verify]. If you are building on your own land, confirm exactly how the scheme applies to you against the current NT source rather than assuming.

For how the Territory sits alongside the other states’ schemes, see our state-by-state home warranty guide, the NSW HBCF eligibility guide, and the Victorian DBI guide.

Nothing in software changes the scheme, and nothing in software issues, arranges or affects the cover. What software changes is whether the records the scheme runs on exist when you need them. Every pressure point above is documentary: holding the certificate copy against the job, proving what the contract price was after variations, showing what was built and when, and answering a claim from files rather than memory across a six-year tail.

A platform that documents variations as they are approved, keeps costs and claims tied to the job, and holds the job’s documents (contract, certificate copy, records) in one place is quietly building your evidence file as a by-product of normal work. Keeping cost and cashflow visible also makes the business less likely to hit the insolvency the scheme exists to protect against, though that is a matter of running the business well, not of the cover itself.