Getting an insurance license in Iowa

Accident and Health or Sickness

Sells cover for sickness, bodily injury or accidental death in Iowa, and it may carry disability income benefits too. It is one line rather than two, and no pre-licensing course is required for it.

Appraiser

Values the loss when an insurer and a policyholder invoke the appraisal clause of a property policy. New in 2025, and it asks for three years as an engineer, architect, adjuster or contractor on top of knowing how buildings are put together.

Casualty

Sells cover against legal liability in Iowa, including liability for death, injury or disability and for damage to real or personal property. No pre-licensing course is required, and a producer who already holds Personal Lines reaches it on a narrower examination.

Credit

Credit insurance in Iowa, which the Code defines as a long list of covers written alongside an extension of credit: credit life, credit disability, credit property, credit unemployment, involuntary unemployment, mortgage life, mortgage guaranty, mortgage disability and guaranteed automobile protection among them. It is a line of authority in its own right, so the examination reaches it, and no pre-licensing course is required.

Crop

Crop insurance in Iowa. It is not one of the eight lines the Code enumerates: rule 191-10.7 adds it, and the rule names it without defining it. The examination reaches it all the same, and no pre-licensing course is required.

Excess and Surplus Lines

Places business with the nonadmitted insurers Iowa Code chapter 515I governs. It is the one Iowa line that cannot be reached on its own examination alone: the property and casualty examinations come first, and no pre-licensing course is required for either.

Independent Adjuster

Investigates, negotiates or settles Iowa property, casualty or workers compensation claims under contract with insurers or self-insurers. Iowa decides which adjuster license you need by how the insurer pays you, and this is the one for a contractor rather than an employee.

Life

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

Navigator

Helps Iowans through the federal health insurance marketplace. Iowa says three separate times that the license holds only while the navigator is affiliated with an entity carrying a current federal grant, so the qualification a reader has to keep is somebody else’s.

Personal Lines

Property and casualty insurance sold to individuals and families primarily for noncommercial purposes in Iowa. It is one line rather than two, no pre-licensing course is required, and it is the line the Code lets a producer trade up from: holding it turns the property and casualty examinations into a single commercial insurance subject examination.

Portable Electronics Insurance

A limited license held by the shop that sells cover on phones and tablets alongside the hardware. Iowa prices it per counter or per location, whichever is cheaper, and caps the bill at $5,000 however many stores there are.

Prearranged Funeral Sales Agent

Sells cemetery and funeral merchandise and services to be delivered more than a hundred and twenty days after the first payment. The Insurance Division licenses it, it costs ten dollars, and it stops working the moment the seller stops employing you.

Property

Sells cover for direct or consequential loss or damage to property of any kind in Iowa. No pre-licensing course is required, and a producer who already holds Personal Lines reaches it on a narrower examination.

Public Adjuster

Acts for the insured rather than the insurer, and only on first-party claims for loss or damage to the insured’s own property. It carries a contract the Commissioner has to approve on a filed form before any work begins.

Staff Adjuster

The same work as an independent adjuster, done by somebody an insurer employs directly. Iowa is one of two states here where the license is optional, and the only one whose Code says so outright: 522C.4(2)(a) exempts a staff adjuster from needing one, and the Division licenses anybody who wants one anyway.

Surety

Surety in Iowa. Like Crop it comes from rule 191-10.7 rather than from the Code's own list, and the rule names it without defining it. The examination reaches it, and no pre-licensing course is required.

Umpire

Decides between the two appraisers when they cannot agree on the amount of a first-party property loss. Iowa asks for three years as an engineer, architect, adjuster, appraiser, litigator or insurance regulator before it will, and examines the applicant; Louisiana, the only other state here that regulates the role, registers one on the same kind of background and sets no examination.

Variable Life and Variable Annuity Products

Sells cover provided under variable life insurance contracts and variable annuities in Iowa. There is no Iowa insurance examination for it and no course either, but it cannot be held on its own: an active Life line and the securities examinations come first.

Vehicle Rental Company

The limited license the rental company itself holds. Most rental licenses here cover the counter staff under the company’s own, and California and New Mexico license the counter agent instead of the company. Iowa is the only state that licenses both ends.

Vehicle Rental Counter Employee

The individual license behind the rental desk, and the one Iowa examines. It expires the day the job does, and the examination is set by the Division or by a vendor the Division has approved to give it.

Viatical Settlement Broker

Acts for the person selling a life policy rather than for the buyer. Iowa is one of eight states here that examines it, where the other seven of the fifteen license it on a life producer license held for a year instead, and it gives the licensee a three-year term with twenty credits of training against it.

Viatical Settlement Provider

Buys life policies from the people insured by them and pays the viator a sum for the policy. Licensed on an investigation rather than an examination, and it files an annual statement every March.