The Montana Life license

MCA 33-17-212(1) requires a written examination of an individual applying for a license except as subsection (6) provides, and 33-17-211(1) is the closed list of what the commissioner must verify before approving the application. It is the longest such list on this site and it is worth reading in full: 18 or older; no act that is a ground for refusal under 33-17-1001; the fees at 33-2-708 paid; the examinations for each kind of insurance passed within 12 months of application; residency in Montana or in a state that grants Montanans similar privileges, with the license terminating if the licensee relocates; competent, trustworthy and of good reputation; experience or training or otherwise qualified in the kinds applied for and reasonably familiar with the code; the funeral director bar; and a background examination under 33-17-220. No course is in it. The nearest thing is "has experience or training or otherwise is qualified", which is an alternative rather than a requirement to study, and Montana publishes the pass mark, 75 percent, rather than a syllabus. One disqualification sits on this line and on no other kind but its pair. MCA 33-17-211(1)(h) says an applicant for a license as to life or disability insurance may not be a funeral director, undertaker or mortician operating in this or any other state, may not be an officer, employee or representative of one, and may not hold an interest in or benefit from such a business, except as 33-20-1501(1)(c)(ii) permits. Nothing else on this site bars a whole trade from a line of authority. Montana has no reciprocity route to a resident license and that is not an omission here. 33-17-212(6)(c) exempts "an applicant for a license as a nonresident insurance producer", and 33-17-212(7) grants the previously-licensed-elsewhere waiver expressly to somebody applying for a nonresident license in this state. Most states here write that waiver for the resident license, and Georgia and Oklahoma are the other two that do not: neither has a resident reciprocity route at all. Montana's own residency test at 33-17-211(1)(e) is what makes it work: an applicant qualifies by living in Montana or in a state that grants Montana residents similar privileges, so the chapter has less need of the two doors everybody else builds.

Read at leg.mt.gov on 2026-08-16

MCA 33-17-212(6)(a), and it is the oldest closing door recorded anywhere on this site: no examination is required of "an individual lawfully licensed as an insurance producer as to the kind or kinds of insurance to be transacted as of or immediately prior to January 1, 1961, and who continues to be licensed". Alabama's closes to anybody first licensed after 2013 and Kansas's crop door after April 30, 1986; Montana's shut sixty-five years ago and has stayed open only for people who never let the license go.

Read at leg.mt.gov on 2026-08-16

MCA 33-17-212(6)(b). No examination is required of an applicant for a license covering the same kind or kinds of insurance the applicant was licensed for in Montana within the 12 months immediately preceding the application, unless the earlier license was a temporary one or the commissioner suspended, revoked or terminated it. Arizona writes the same twelve months, Maine allows two years and South Dakota five.

Read at leg.mt.gov on 2026-08-16