Insurance License Hub

The Massachusetts Surplus Lines Broker license

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.

Course

None

This license has no pre-licensing course route.

Ways in

2

None of them requires a state exam, because this license has none.

Exam

n/a

Not required on any of the routes below.

Every way to qualify

More than one route leads to this license, and which one you take changes what you study and whether you sit the exam. There is no pre-licensing course among them: this license is qualified for by a license already held or a license held in another state.

  1. Route 1 Hold the Massachusetts producer license with property and casualty authority

    No state exam for this license

    The underlying producer license

    • an active Massachusetts insurance producer license carrying both the Property and the Casualty lines of authority

    and age

    • At least 18 years old, which is the statute's own figure for this license.

    G.L. c. 175, section 168(b) issues the license to any suitable person aged 18 or older on the fee prescribed by section 14 and a written application under section 162L, and asks for nothing else: no examination, no course, no bond and no experience. Pearson's list of every Massachusetts examination it gives carries no surplus lines paper, which is the vendor confirming the statute. The Division supplies the one requirement the statute leaves to it, an active Massachusetts producer license with property and casualty authority. The license runs one year rather than the producer license's three, and the Division may renew it each year without the detailed information section 162L asks for the first time.

    Read at malegislature.gov on 2026-08-19

  2. Route 2 Hold a surplus lines broker license in your home state

    No state exam for this license

    • an active surplus lines broker license in the applicant's home state

    The Division's licensing page gives the nonresident this alternative to the Massachusetts property and casualty producer license, and it is the whole of the requirement. Where the applicant is affiliated with a business entity, the entity qualifies separately: at least one affiliated member holds an active Massachusetts surplus lines broker license, and a resident entity maintains a Massachusetts property and casualty producer license as well. Every application and renewal goes through NIPR and the Division does not accept paper.

    Read at the Department on 2026-08-19

No national seller sells a course for this license, and nothing could. Massachusetts examines nobody for this license: section 168 asks for the fee, the application and an age, the Division adds a property and casualty producer license already held, and Pearson gives no surplus lines paper.