Specialty insurance lines

Two kinds of specialised licence sit here. Surplus lines is the authority to place coverage with non-admitted insurers when admitted carriers will not write a risk; in most states it is layered on an existing property and casualty licence, comes with tax-filing and diligent-search duties, and is tested — Florida, for instance, runs a surplus lines pre-licensing course through its surplus lines association. Limited lines are narrow authorities for a single product: travel, rental car, portable electronics, credit, crop and similar. Several carry a filing fee and no exam at all; California's rental car and portable electronics agent licences are two examples with published fees and no examination.

These licences are defined state by state, so the national pattern is what generalises: the common limited lines are credit, travel, crop, title, bail and rental-car, most states examine only some of them, and several license the rest on application alone. Each exam page carries the department's own list and fee schedule for the states we cover.

Surplus lines candidates should expect the exam to concentrate on what makes non-admitted business different: the diligent-search requirement to show that admitted carriers declined the risk, the disclosures to the insured about guaranty-fund protection, the premium-tax filings and the eligibility standards for non-admitted insurers. Limited-lines exams, where they exist, are short and product-specific — travel, credit or crop — and the states that examine none rely on the sponsoring company's training instead.

How to use this family page: start from whether your line is examined at all — surplus lines almost always is, and credit, travel and rental-car often are not — then open the exam guide for the format where there is one, and work the practice set on the diligent-search and tax rules for surplus lines. For exam-free limited lines, the page still explains the filing and renewal steps and the products the licence covers.