Getting an insurance license in Massachusetts

Accident and Health or Sickness

Sells cover for sickness, bodily injury or accidental death in Massachusetts, and it may carry disability income benefits too. The Division's own table shortens the name to Accident and Health. No pre-licensing course is required, though a producer who goes on to sell long term care products owes a separate training course under a different chapter.

Insurance Adviser

Reads somebody else's policy for a fee and tells them what it is worth, on a written contract the Commissioner has approved. It is the Massachusetts consultant license, it is fenced off from selling, and the applicant has to produce three citizens willing to vouch for them in writing.

Bank and Credit Union Insurance Producer

The producer license Massachusetts issues to a bank or a credit union rather than to a person or an ordinary agency. It is the one license here that another regulator has to approve first, and the one the Division still takes on paper through the post.

Casualty

Sells cover against legal liability in Massachusetts, including liability for death, injury or disability and for damage to real or personal property. No pre-licensing course is required, the examination is its own rather than half of a combined one, and a $75 lead paint surcharge is payable on applying for the line.

Credit

Limited line credit insurance in Massachusetts, which the Division's table calls Limited Credit. It is a line of authority in its own right and the examination reaches it, and no pre-licensing course is required of the applicant. The training obligation the statute does create for this line falls on the insurer rather than on the person being licensed.

Life Settlement Broker

Negotiates the sale of somebody's life policy on their behalf, owing them a fiduciary duty while doing it. Massachusetts opens it only to a life producer of a year's standing, and it will not issue the license until the Commissioner has approved an antifraud plan.

Life Settlement Provider

Buys the policy the broker is selling, and is licensed on the company side rather than the producer side. Its fee and its term are set by pointing at a foreign stock life insurance company's, which is how Massachusetts prices a licensee it treats as a carrier.

Life

Sells life insurance in Massachusetts, which the statute writes as coverage on human lives and allows to carry endowment and annuity benefits, benefits for death or dismemberment by accident, and disability income. No pre-licensing course is required for it.

Motor Vehicle Damage Appraiser

Inspects a damaged vehicle and writes the appraisal an insurer pays against. It is the one Massachusetts license with a course requirement, the one licensed by a board rather than by the Division itself, and the one whose examination asks the candidate to appraise a real damaged car.

Personal Lines

Property and casualty insurance sold to individuals and families for primarily noncommercial purposes in Massachusetts. It is one line rather than two, no pre-licensing course is required, and it is the one line the Division hands over without an examination to a producer who already holds Property and Casualty. The $75 lead paint surcharge applies to it as well.

Pharmacy Benefit Manager

Runs the drug benefit for a health plan, and since 2026 cannot do it in Massachusetts without a license from the Division. At twenty-five thousand dollars to apply and the same to renew, it costs more than forty times what Massachusetts charges to register a service contract provider, which is the next dearest thing the Division licenses.

Portable Electronics Insurance

Lets a phone or laptop vendor sell cover on the device it just sold, under one license that reaches every counter it runs. The supervising entity behind it does the training and keeps the register of locations, and the Commissioner may look at that register on ten days' notice.

Property

Sells cover for direct or consequential loss or damage to property of every kind in Massachusetts. No pre-licensing course is required, the examination is its own rather than half of a combined one, and a $75 lead paint surcharge is payable on applying for the line.

Public Insurance Adjuster

Works a property loss for the policyholder rather than for the insurer, on a written contract the Commissioner has approved. It is the only adjuster license Massachusetts issues, it is closed to anybody who has not sat the state paper, and it is the only license here that asks for two years of claims work before the examination rather than after it.

Reinsurance Intermediary Broker

Places a ceding insurer's reinsurance without the power to bind any of it. Massachusetts allows no exemption from the license at all, and it will not issue one to anybody who has not held a producer license for three years first.

Reinsurance Intermediary Manager

Binds or manages the assumed reinsurance book of a reinsurer, which is the authority the broker license does not carry. Everything the broker needs applies here too, and the Commissioner may add a bond and errors and omissions cover on top.

Self-Service Storage Agent

Lets a storage facility operator sell cover on what a tenant leaves in the unit, incidental to renting the space. One license covers every location the operator runs, and the employees who actually sell hold nothing at all.

Service Contract Provider

Stands behind an extended warranty on a home or on consumer goods. Massachusetts registers it, prices the registration at six hundred dollars every three years, and asks it to back the promise with either insurance, a reserve and a deposit, or a parent company's net worth.

Surplus Lines Broker

Places property and casualty cover with insurers not admitted in Massachusetts, once the standard market has been tried and found short. The Division calls it a surplus lines broker; the statute that grants it calls it a special insurance broker, and so do the forms it files.

Third Party Administrator

Administers a health plan for somebody who is not the insurer, most often a self-funded employer. Massachusetts registers it rather than licensing it, and what the registration really buys the state is a yearly count of who is covered.

Travel

Limited line travel insurance in Massachusetts: cover for the personal risks of planned travel, from a cancelled trip to lost baggage to sickness on the road. It is the newest line here and the statute numbers it 7 and a half rather than renumbering the ones after it. No course and no examination, and it is not a line an individual applicant sits anything for.

Variable Life and Variable Annuity Products

Sells cover provided under variable life insurance contracts and variable annuities in Massachusetts. There is no Massachusetts examination for it and no course either, but it cannot be held on its own: an active Life line and a valid FINRA number come first.