Insurance License Hub

The Virginia Title license

Title

Sells title insurance in Virginia. It is the only Virginia line with a pre-licensing course.

Course

16 hrs

The shortest single course route.

Ways in

2

1 of them skips the state exam.

Exam

$35

Required on some routes and not others.

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. They are listed in full because the course is only the first of them.

  1. Route 1 Take the 16-hour course, all of it with an instructor

    State exam required

    • 16 hours of pre-licensing education for the Title line. 16 of those hours cannot be taken at your own pace, so a fully self-paced online course does not satisfy this on its own. The route's own note says which live formats the state accepts , completed within 1 year

    Code of Virginia section 38.2-1814.1(A). The sixteen hours may be classroom education or distance education, and the statute defines the second one narrowly: "instruction delivered or presented by or under the general supervision of an instructor using a medium other than a classroom setting", and it "shall not include self-study or correspondence courses". So none of the sixteen hours can be taken at your own pace, which is why no national seller carries a Virginia title product and why the Bureau approves no school: there is nothing self-paced for it to approve. An instructor may treat 95 percent attendance as full attendance. The proof of completion is signed twice, by the applicant and by the instructor, and a materially false certification by either is a knowing and willful violation that can cost the instructor their own agent license. Subsection B gives the course a year: satisfy it, and the education is good only for the one-year period that follows, though the Commission may waive that in an individual case.

    Read at scc.virginia.gov on 2026-08-16

  2. Route 2 Have been an authorized title agent on 1 January 1987

    Exempt from the state exam

    • Authorization as an agent of a title insurance company licensed to transact title insurance in Virginia, held as of 1 January 1987

    Code of Virginia section 38.2-1814.1(D) exempts those agents from subsections A and B, and subsection A is where both the examination and the sixteen hours live, so the exemption reaches both. It is a grandfather forty years old and it is still in the Code, which is worth knowing before assuming an old Virginia title agent took a course. Subsection C is a different kind of absence and not a route: officers or employees who are not agents of a title insurance company are outside the section altogether, because they are not licensed under it.

    Read at law.lis.virginia.gov on 2026-08-16

A course is required and nobody sells one

There is nothing a national seller can sell. Va. Code 38.2-1814.1's own definition of distance education excludes self-study and correspondence, so every one of the sixteen hours has to be instructor-led, which is also why the Bureau approves no school.