The Maine Property and Casualty Consultant license

The consultant license is the one place in Maine insurance law where experience is still mandatory, and the requirement sits in the prelicensing section rather than in the consultant subchapter. 24-A M.R.S. 1410(5): "An applicant for examination for a consultant license must have had not less than 5 years of actual experience with respect to the kinds of insurance and contracts to be covered by the license."Pearson VUE enforces it before the booking rather than after it, and its Maine handbook says so: candidates "will be asked to confirm that they have a minimum of five years of experience in the type of insurance for which they are applying during the exam registration process. Without confirmation of this experience, candidates will not be permitted to schedule a consultant exam."The second requirement is the bond. 1463 makes the license conditional on both in one sentence, and 1464 fixes the bond at $20,000 of aggregate liability, continuous in form, indemnifying anybody damaged by the licensee's fraudulent act and conditioned on faithful accounting for money that passes through their hands. 1464(3) is the part that matters after the license issues: the surety may cancel on 30 days' written notice to the licensee and the superintendent, and if no replacement bond is in place before cancellation "the consultant's license terminates". No hearing, no order, no grace. 1410(4), where the education requirement used to be, has been empty since PL 2007, c. 51 repealed it, so there is nothing to study for this paper beyond the five years. The examination itself may be given in two parts under 1410(2), one on the kinds of insurance applied for and one on a consultant's duties and Maine insurance law, and 1410(6) lets a candidate who fails one part be re-examined on that part alone while still paying the full fee. Passing does not keep: 1410(6) sends anybody who has not applied for a license within two years of passing back to register and pay for a fresh examination. The paper for this authority is 12-ME-48, Property & Casualty Consultant, 1 hour 45 minutes, $55. 1402(11) enumerates six kinds of insurance under this one authority and the list is closed: casualty, property, surety, marine and transportation, title, and legal services insurance. That is wider than the property and casualty producer lines it sits beside, because title is a separate limited producer line at 1420-F(I) and marine and transportation and legal services are not producer lines at all. The experience requirement is measured against whichever of the six the license will cover rather than against the authority as a whole, because 1410(5) asks for five years "with respect to the kinds of insurance and contracts to be covered by the license".

Read at legislature.maine.gov on 2026-08-19

24-A M.R.S. 1427-A(1). Maine writes this exemption for adjusters and consultants in a section of its own, separate from the producer version at 1420-H, and the wording is wider than it first looks: it waives "any prelicensing education or examination pursuant to section 1410", which is the whole of what section 1410 asks of a resident applicant. The three ways to prove it are alternatives rather than steps, and the third is the cheapest: the NAIC producer database showing the license in good standing for the type requested. Note what is not waived. 1427-A(1) reaches the prelicensing education and the examination and nothing else, so 1426(1) still requires the superintendent to find the applicant "otherwise qualified for the license applied for", and 1464's bond still has to be filed with the application, because that section falls on "every applicant for license as a consultant" rather than on an applicant for examination. What the exemption does remove is the five years, since 1410(5) is drafted as a condition on an applicant for examination and there is no examination on this route.

Read at legislature.maine.gov on 2026-08-19

24-A M.R.S. 1427-A(2), written as a duty rather than an option: somebody licensed in another state who moves here "must apply within 90 days of establishing legal residence". No prelicensing education or examination is required for the license type previously held in the prior state, except where the superintendent determines otherwise by rule, and no such rule has been made. The clock runs from residence rather than from the application, so a person who waits out the 90 days is back on the examination route. 1464's bond is filed with the application either way.

Read at legislature.maine.gov on 2026-08-19

24-A M.R.S. 1427-A(3), and it turns on four conditions rather than one: the earlier license was the same type, the applicant met the applicable continuing education requirements across the two years, the earlier license was terminated voluntarily, and the applicant is still fully qualified. A license that was revoked or suspended closes this route permanently, in the subsection's own last sentence. Continuing education is the condition that bites here, because 1481-A(1) applies subchapter 7 to producers and consultants alike: 24 hours every two years including three of ethics, on a compliance date set from the licensee's own birth month and the parity of their birth year.

Read at legislature.maine.gov on 2026-08-19