The Arkansas Workers' Compensation Adjuster license

Twenty hours is a minimum, and Rule 31 spends most of its length prescribing what has to be inside them, down to the half hour: five hours of state insurance laws and rules, three hours of general adjusting practices, three hours of Arkansas workers' compensation adjusting and the Commission, two hours of unfair claims settlement and trade practices, an hour of ethics, and the rest across insurance concepts, adjusting definitions and workers' compensation definitions. The syllabus is the requirement as much as the total is. Two portions carry across rather than being repeated: an applicant who completed the five hours of state insurance laws and rules, or the hour of ethics, within two years of filing is exempt from that portion again, which Rule 31 section 5(b) attributes to Ark. Code Ann. section 23-64-202. The whole course has to be finished no more than two years before the licensing examination, and the provider's certificate has to be presented to the examination vendor on the day: a candidate who arrives without it is not allowed to sit and has to reschedule. Adjusters were exempt from prelicensing education until Act 397 of 2021 struck the exemption out of Ark. Code Ann. section 23-64-202(b)(2)(A)(iii)(d), leaving it for insurance consultants alone. Rule 31, effective 2022-02-14, is what the Department wrote to fill the gap. One exemption survives for adjusters and it is not a course: an applicant holding a current certification from a national or state claims association that the Commissioner has approved as a continuing education provider is exempt from Rule 31 outright.

Read at portal.insurance.arkansas.gov on 2026-08-15

Ark. Code Ann. 23-64-509(a): an applicant previously licensed for the same lines of authority in another state "shall not be required to complete any prelicensing education or examination". Either limb works and the first has no clock: currently licensed there, or applying within ninety days of cancellation. Read at the act that enacted it, Act 580 of 2001, because Arkansas publishes its Code only through a commercial viewer with no per-section URL. Rule 31, effective 2022, restates the same exemption in its section 3(b)(3), which is what says the provision is still doing work; no search was made for an amendment between the two.

Read at arkleg.state.ar.us on 2026-08-16

Ark. Code Ann. 23-64-509(b) for producers, and Rule 31 section 3(b)(3) says the same thing for adjusters as well: somebody licensed and in good standing elsewhere under the Producer Licensing Model Act who moves here, establishes residency and then applies is outside Rule 31 altogether. Neither the education nor the examination is required for a line already held, and the ninety days run from establishing residence. Read at the act that enacted it, Act 580 of 2001, because Arkansas publishes its Code only through a commercial viewer with no per-section URL. Rule 31, effective 2022, restates the same exemption in its section 3(b)(3), which is what says the provision is still doing work; no search was made for an amendment between the two.

Read at arkleg.state.ar.us on 2026-08-16

Rule 31 section 3(b)(4). The applicant is outside Rule 31 and owes none of the twenty hours. It is the only adjuster-specific way out of the course, and it survived Act 397 of 2021, which took away the blanket adjuster exemption the statute used to carry. It reaches the education only: nothing in Ark. Code Ann. 23-64-509 excuses this applicant the examination.

Read at portal.insurance.arkansas.gov on 2026-08-16