The South Dakota Surety Bondsman license
Surety Bondsman
Writes bail bonds for an insurer under a power of attorney. It is the one of South Dakota's four bail licenses that depends on somebody else's appointment, and the paper behind it cannot be sat online.
Course
None
This license has no pre-licensing course route.
Ways in
1
It requires the state exam.
Exam
$85
Required.
Every way to qualify
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Route 1 Clear the background check, then pass the bail bonds paper
State exam required
What the license covers
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SDCL 58-22-1(6): a surety bondsman is a person approved by the director and appointed by an insurer by power of attorney to execute or countersign bail bonds for the insurer in connection with judicial proceedings, and who receives or is promised money or other things of value.
and the examination
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Pearson's SD Bail Bonds Producer paper, series code InsSD_BB49, fifty questions in sixty minutes at $85 and available only in a test centre, never online. Half of it is South Dakota law and the rest is bail bond principles, practices and terminology.
and age and residence
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Twenty-one years of age and a resident of South Dakota for at least one year. Pearson's handbook prints both as prerequisites to the examination itself rather than to the license, so a candidate who fails either cannot even sit the paper.
and the background check
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An Authorization form sent with payment to the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, under SDCL 58-22-14. Fingerprints certified by an authorized law enforcement officer are recommended and are not a prerequisite, which the handbook says in terms.
SDCL 58-22-1 defines the four kinds of bail licensee South Dakota issues and this file is one of them. 58-22-3 disqualifies a class of applicant outright and makes it a Class 6 felony to be one: jailers, police officers, committing magistrates, magistrate court judges, sheriffs, deputy sheriffs, constables, and anybody with the power to arrest or any control over federal, state, county or municipal prisoners. 58-22-27 and 58-22-28 govern the appointment and its termination, so the license follows the insurer's power of attorney. South Dakota asks no pre-licensing course for it, which puts it beside its producer lines and against Missouri's twenty-four hours and Georgia's sixteen.
Read at sdlegislature.gov on 2026-08-20
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No national seller sells a course for this license. Aceable does not sell South Dakota at all. South Dakota asks no course for any of its four bail licenses, and nobody sells preparation for the fifty-question paper behind them either.