What a line of authority is

A line of authority is the kind of insurance a license lets you sell. One license, one or more lines. It is the reason two people can both be "licensed insurance agents" and be allowed to sell completely different things.

It is also the unit almost everything else is measured in. Course hours are usually per line. Exams are per line. Fees are frequently per line, so adding a second one costs again.

The same few ideas, named 248 ways

Every state draws its own boundaries and picks its own words. Across the 51 jurisdictions on this site we have recorded 248 distinct line names, and 196 of them appear in exactly one state. That is not because those states regulate something nobody else does. It is because they named it differently.

Line name	States recording this line
Personal Lines	Arkansas , Arizona , California , Colorado , Connecticut , District of Columbia , Florida , Georgia , Illinois , Kentucky , Louisiana , Massachusetts , Michigan , Minnesota , Mississippi , North Carolina , New Jersey , Ohio , Virginia , Washington , Wisconsin , West Virginia
Life	Arkansas , Arizona , California , Colorado , Connecticut , District of Columbia , Georgia , Illinois , Indiana , Kentucky , Louisiana , Massachusetts , Minnesota , North Carolina , New Jersey , Ohio , Washington , Wisconsin , West Virginia
Casualty	Arkansas , Arizona , California , Colorado , Connecticut , District of Columbia , Illinois , Kentucky , Louisiana , Massachusetts , Minnesota , Mississippi , North Carolina , New Jersey , Ohio , Washington , Wisconsin
Property	Arkansas , Arizona , California , Colorado , District of Columbia , Kentucky , Louisiana , Massachusetts , Minnesota , Mississippi , North Carolina , New Jersey , Ohio , Washington , Wisconsin
Public Adjuster	Georgia , Hawaii , Idaho , Kansas , Mississippi , New York , South Carolina , Tennessee , Virginia , Washington , West Virginia , Wyoming
Title	Georgia , Indiana , Louisiana , North Dakota , New Jersey , Ohio , Tennessee , Virginia , Wisconsin
Accident and Health or Sickness	Arkansas , California , District of Columbia , Louisiana , North Carolina , Wisconsin , West Virginia
Credit	Connecticut , Georgia , Louisiana , Maryland , New Mexico , Ohio , Wisconsin
Independent adjuster	Alabama , Hawaii , Idaho , Indiana , Mississippi , Washington , West Virginia
Navigator	Arkansas , Georgia , Maine , Missouri , Montana , Oklahoma , Tennessee
Adjuster	Georgia , Maine , New Mexico , Oregon , South Carolina , Wyoming
Surplus Lines	District of Columbia , Louisiana , New Jersey , Ohio , Texas , West Virginia

The twelve most widely shared names. Capitalization is not counted as a difference here, which is why California appears under a heading it writes in lower case. Each state page carries the line in that regulator's own words.

Florida numbers its lines instead

Most states name the line. Florida gives it a code, and those codes are what its Department, its course providers and its register all use. If you have arrived from a guide written for another state, this is the translation you are missing.

Code	What Florida calls it
2-14 214	Life (Including Annuities & Variable Contracts) Agent
2-15 215	Health & Life (Including Annuities & Variable Contracts) Agent
2-20 220	General Lines Agent
2-40 240	Health Agent
4-40 440	Customer Representative
6-20 620	All Lines Adjuster
20-44 2044	Personal Lines Agent

The second, smaller number is the same code written without the hyphen, which is how a great many people type it.

Why this costs money to get wrong

Because the line decides the requirement, and a requirement read off the wrong line is wrong by a factor rather than a margin. In Florida the general lines code is a 200-hour course and the life code is 30 hours. They are two lines, on one page, at the same Department.

The same trap runs across states. A combined line is not always the two separate lines added together, and a state that charges per line will charge you twice for holding two.

Every hour count and every fee on this site is attached to the line the regulator attached it to, with the document it came from and the date we read it. When a figure looks surprising, the line is usually the reason.