Getting an insurance license in Delaware

Accident and Health or Sickness

Sells cover for sickness, bodily injury or accidental death in Delaware, and it may carry disability income benefits too. No pre-licensing course is required.

Automobile Adjuster

Investigates and negotiates settlement of Delaware automobile claims. Separate from the Motor Vehicle Appraiser license, which assesses the damage rather than settles the claim.

Casualty Adjuster

Investigates and negotiates settlement of Delaware casualty claims, the liability side of the pair. No pre-licensing course is required.

Crop Adjuster

Investigates and settles Delaware crop claims, and it is the one adjuster line the state does not examine itself. Delaware takes a federal proficiency test in place of its own paper, and no pre-licensing course is required.

Fidelity and Surety Adjuster

Investigates and negotiates settlement of Delaware fidelity and surety claims. No pre-licensing course is required.

Marine and Transportation Adjuster

Investigates and negotiates settlement of Delaware marine and transportation claims. No pre-licensing course is required.

Property Adjuster

Investigates and negotiates settlement of Delaware property claims on behalf of licensed agents, brokers, self-insurers or insurers. No pre-licensing course is required.

Workers' Compensation Adjuster

Investigates and negotiates settlement of Delaware workers' compensation claims. A regulation of its own governs it, and it sets continuing education rather than a pre-licensing course.

Apprentice Adjuster or Appraiser

Delaware’s way in for somebody qualified to adjust or appraise in every respect except experience. It runs for one year, it costs $75 rather than $125, and it is granted on a licensed adjuster’s signature rather than on the applicant’s own qualification.

Automobile Club

The insurance an automobile club may sell in Delaware, limited to the activities at 18 Del. C. 908A. Delaware asks no pre-licensing course of it and no examination either: 18 Del. C. 1709(e) says in one line that an applicant for this license is not required to complete any prelicensing education or examination.

Surety Bail Agent

Sells, solicits or negotiates surety bail bonds in Delaware under an insurer’s appointment. One of two lines of authority the Department issues to a bail producer, and licensed under its own subchapter rather than under the producer chapter.

Casualty

Sells cover against legal liability in Delaware, including liability for death, injury or disability and for damage to real or personal property. No pre-licensing course is required.

Credit

Credit insurance lines in Delaware, sold alongside an extension of credit. The Code lists it among the limited lines a producer may hold and then does not excuse it from the examination, which puts Delaware with Nebraska and Rhode Island rather than with Missouri and Arizona.

Crop

Sells multi-peril crop insurance in Delaware. It is not one of the nine lines the Code writes out, and it exists because the Code’s tenth entry leaves room for one: the Department names it and gives it an examination of its own.

Discount Medical Plan Organization

Sells access to discounted medical and ancillary services, which is not insurance and is licensed anyway. Held by the organization, qualified on documents and a bond, and at $525 the second most expensive license Delaware issues.

Fidelity and Surety

Fidelity and surety in Delaware, which the Code makes a line of authority of its own rather than folding into casualty the way South Dakota and Alaska do. No pre-licensing course is required.

Fraternal Producer

Sells, solicits or negotiates life, accident, health and annuity contracts for a fraternal benefit society. Licensed under the ordinary producer chapter, with two exemptions of its own that turn on how much of the agent’s time the society takes.

Insurance Premium Finance Company

Held by the company that lends a policyholder the premium and takes the policy's unearned premium as its security, not by anybody who sells insurance. Delaware asks no course and no examination for it, and prices it at $500 a year whether it is new or a renewal.

Life

Sells life insurance in Delaware, which the Code writes as coverage on human lives including endowment and annuity benefits, benefits for death or dismemberment by accident, and disability income. Delaware asks no pre-licensing course for it.

Limited Lines Travel Insurance Producer

The business entity that registers travel retailers and lets them offer travel insurance under its direction, which is a different thing from the Travel line of authority an individual producer holds. Delaware exempts it from the examination and the continuing education Chapter 17 asks of everybody else, and charges $1,025 to issue it.

Marine and Transportation Insurance

Marine and transportation insurance in Delaware, a line of authority in its own right here and part of the property line in Montana. No pre-licensing course is required.

Motor Vehicle Appraiser

Assesses physical damage to motor vehicles in Delaware. It appraises the damage where an adjuster settles the claim, and the Code keeps the two apart in the same section.

Personal Lines

Property and casualty insurance sold to individuals and families for noncommercial purposes in Delaware. It is one line rather than two and no pre-licensing course is required.

Portable Electronic Producer

A limited lines license held by the shop rather than by a person. One license covers every employee at every location the vendor sells from, and at $1,025 it is the most expensive license Delaware issues.

Pre-Arranged Funeral

Life insurance or annuity products used solely to fund a pre-arranged funeral program in Delaware. Nebraska and Kansas name a pre-need funeral line too; Delaware files it among the limited lines and examines it like the rest.

Property Bail Agent

Pledges cash, postal money orders, cashier’s checks or other property as surety for a bail bond, without an insurer behind it. The second of the two lines of authority Delaware issues to a bail producer, and the one that puts the agent’s own balance sheet on the line.

Property

Sells cover for direct or consequential loss or damage to property of every kind in Delaware. No pre-licensing course is required.

Public Adjuster

Acts for the insured rather than the insurer, and only on first party claims under policies covering real or personal property. Delaware gives it a chapter of its own, a $20,000 bond and an examination, and no pre-licensing course.

Reinsurance Intermediary

Placed between a ceding insurer and a reinsurer, either as the broker arranging the cession or as the manager writing reinsurance on a reinsurer's behalf. Delaware builds it on a producer license rather than on a course: there is no examination and no hour count anywhere in the chapter.

Rental Car Insurance Limited Producer

Held by the rental company, not the counter staff, and confined to insurance sold with and incidental to renting a vehicle. Delaware puts a training duty on the company and no course or examination on anybody.

Self-Service Storage

Cover for the contents of a rented storage unit in Delaware. Delaware asks no pre-licensing course of it and no examination either: 18 Del. C. 1709(f) says in one line that an applicant for this license is not required to complete any prelicensing education or examination.

Surplus Lines Broker

Places Delaware risks with insurers the state has not admitted. It is stacked on a producer license rather than sold beside one, and it is the only license here granted on the Commissioner’s judgment of competence with no examination anywhere in it.

Third Party Administrator

Held by the company that underwrites, collects premiums for, or adjusts and settles claims on health or pharmacy benefits for somebody else's plan. Delaware licenses it by regulation rather than by statute, asks no course and no examination, and tests the applicant's books and its net worth instead.

Title Insurance

Title insurance in Delaware. It is the one line here a lawyer walks into: the Code excuses an applicant who is admitted to practice law in Delaware from any prelicensing education and from the examination, and asks everybody else to sit it.

Travel

Travel insurance in Delaware. Delaware asks no pre-licensing course of it and no examination either: 18 Del. C. 1709(d) says in one line that an applicant for this license is not required to complete any prelicensing education or examination.

Variable Life and Variable Annuity Products

Sells cover provided under variable life insurance contracts and variable annuities in Delaware. It cannot be held on its own: the Code conditions the variable annuity line on holding a life agent license and on a securities registration, and the securities body it names has not existed since 2007.

Viatical Settlement Broker

Acts for the person selling the policy rather than for the buyer. A life producer of a year’s standing reaches it by giving notice rather than by qualifying again, which is the whole design of the section.

Viatical Settlement Provider

Buys life policies from the people insured by them. Delaware qualifies it on a plan of operation, a reputation and $250,000 of demonstrated financial responsibility rather than on anything an applicant can study for.