The Arkansas IPA Guide license
IPA Guide
An In-Person Assister guide, the third of the four Marketplace licenses Rule 104 names. Rule 104 gives the in-person assister a license name of its own, separate from the navigator and the certified application counselor it lists beside it. Pennsylvania registers a Pennie-Certified Exchange Assister and Nevada licenses an Exchange Enrollment Facilitator for the same work.
Course
No count
A course is required and the regulator publishes no hour count for it.
Ways in
1
There is no state exam for this license.
Exam
n/a
Not required on any of the routes below.
Every way to qualify
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Route 1 Complete the federal Marketplace training, then apply
No state exam for this license
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A pre-licensing course in federal Health Insurance Marketplace training and testing on the Marketplace Learning Management System
Rule 104 is one page and it names all four instruments in a single definition: "'License' means a license obtained from the Arkansas Insurance Department for an IPA Guide, Navigator, Certified Application Counselor, or Health Insurance Marketplace licensed producer."It sets one figure for all four, a $35 regulatory fee paid before issue and $35 again at every annual renewal, and it has applied to every assister license issued or renewed since 12 September 2013. The authority is Section 1 of Act 1439 of 2013, codified at Ark. Code Ann. 23-64-607. The examination vendor gives no assister paper among its eleven and Rule 31 sets no assister syllabus, so what stands in for both is federal: the Marketplace Learning Management System training and testing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services run, which the Department says outright it will not process an application without. "APPLICATIONS WILL NOT BE PROCESSED UNTIL ALL TRAINING IS COMPLETED."Fourteen other jurisdictions here license a navigator, a certified application counselor, an exchange assister or an exchange enrollment facilitator, and none of them issues anything called an in-person assister guide. Rule 104 puts it in the same definition as the navigator and the counselor and charges it the same $35.
Read at the Department on 2026-08-20
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A course is required and nobody sells one
The training is federal, it is delivered on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' own Marketplace Learning Management System, and there is no Arkansas examination and no Arkansas approved course to be one of: the register has eight groups and none of them is an assister group. Nothing a national seller offers can satisfy it. No national seller offers an Arkansas product for it.