Insurance License Hub

The California Insurance Adjuster license

Insurance Adjuster

California's independent adjuster license, which the Department files under the code AJ. It is licensed as a business with a qualified manager rather than as a person: the Department prices it $311 per qualified manager and issues the adjusters working underneath it $28 identification cards instead of licenses. An adjuster employed exclusively and regularly by one insurer needs none of it.

Course

None

This license has no pre-licensing course route.

Ways in

1

It requires the state exam.

Exam

Varies

Priced per paper. The prices are below.

Every way to qualify

  1. Route 1 Two years adjusting claims, and pass the examination

    State exam required

    Adjusting experience

    • 2 years Two years of certified experience in the insurance adjusting field, which the Department measures as 4,000 hours of compensated time in it

    and bond

    • a bond in the penal sum of $2,000

    California Insurance Code section 14025 is the closed list and no course is in it: at least eighteen years of age, no act or crime that is a ground for denial under section 480 of the Business and Professions Code, at least two years of experience adjusting insurance claims or the equivalent, and whatever else the Commissioner fixes by rule. Section 14026 leaves the examination to the Commissioner, "written or oral, or a combination of both", and section 14027 makes the application fee buy exactly one attempt: a failed candidate pays the reexamination fee for every one after it. The Department's fee schedule prices the license at $311 per qualified manager, the examination at $79 and each reexamination at $32. The test the applicant satisfies may be met by the applicant OR by the manager, which is what section 14025 says in its opening words, and it is why this license is a business license rather than a personal one. The Department's own requirements page puts a number on the two years that the statute does not: "Individuals must have two years certified experience in insurance adjusting field, which equals to 4,000 hours of compensated time in the adjusting field."It also carries the bond, $2,000, and the quotation that decides what this license is for: Cal. Ins. Code section 14021 defines an insurance adjuster as "a person other than a private investigator who, for any consideration whatsoever, engages in the business of making an investigation for the purpose of obtaining information in the course of adjusting" a claim.

    Read at the Department on 2026-08-20

California's own education register offers Independent Insurance Adjuster as a category and WebCE sells a course under it, but no seller's product satisfies this license, and California requires no pre-licensing course for it: section 14025 asks for two years of adjusting experience and an examination and nothing taught. What a course prepares somebody for here is the examination rather than a requirement.