The West Virginia Public Adjuster license

33-12B-5(a) is a closed list of seven findings the commissioner must make and no course is in it: eighteen or older; a West Virginia resident or eligible to designate West Virginia as a home state; trustworthy, competent, reliable and of good reputation; a business or mailing address here for service of process, or an acknowledgement of this state's jurisdiction and an automatic appointment of the Secretary of State as agent; no act that is a ground for refusal under 33-12B-11; the written examination passed for the lines applied for; and the fees paid. The Department says the rest in four words in its own candidate handbook: "Pre-licensing education is not required of adjusters."The paper is its own, the Public Adjuster Property and Casualty examination, and 33-12B-7(b) limits this license to that single line: "A public adjuster may only qualify for a license designating a property and casualty line of authority."The workers compensation and crop lines that the company and independent adjuster may add are closed to it. 33-12B-5(b)(8) dates the whole examination requirement: it applies to individual adjusters first licensed on or after 2021-07-01, or adding a line of authority on or after that date. West Virginia separated the company adjuster from the independent adjuster in the same act, House Bill 4502 of 2020. The examination has a limit on it that almost no state writes down. 33-12B-5(b)(4): an individual who initially fails "is limited to seven additional attempts to pass the examination", which is eight sittings in a lifetime. West Virginia writes the same cap on the producer side at 33-12-5, and the Department states it in its own bail bondsman instructions as "an eight-test limit per lifetime of the individual". It is the only lifetime cap on this site. Arizona is the other state here that caps sittings, at four inside any rolling twelve months rather than for good, and Rhode Island says in terms that somebody who fails simply reapplies and pays again. What West Virginia does here that Rhode Island and New Hampshire expressly forbid is worth knowing before assuming the licenses exclude each other. 33-12B-2(d): "An individual may be licensed concurrently under separate licenses but shall not act as an adjuster representing the interests of the insured and the insurer with respect to the same claim."Rhode Island’s 27-10-5(c) and New Hampshire’s RSA 402-D:3, II bar the combination outright; West Virginia bars the conflict instead. 33-12B-2(c) then allows the one crossing that looks like a conflict and is not: a public adjuster appointed in writing by an insurer to act on its behalf for a specific claim may do so, and is forbidden to charge that claimant a fee for it. The fee is $25 a year under 33-12B-8(a), which the handbook states as $50 renewing every two years on the licensee's birth month, and a business entity adjuster license is $200 a year. Fingerprinting is separate and is the Department's, not the vendor's: $45.75 through IdentoGo, made up of $12.50 for the print, $20.00 to the West Virginia State Police and $13.25 to the FBI, and it is required when adding a new adjuster license type or a new line of authority but not on renewal.

Read at code.wvlegislature.gov on 2026-08-19

33-12B-5(b)(5), and the last sentence is the one to read twice: "The certification must be of a license with the same line of authority for which the individual has applied."A property and casualty adjuster license elsewhere does not open the workers compensation line here. 33-12B-9 is the separate non-resident license and it turns on the other state rather than on the applicant: West Virginia licenses a non-resident only where that person’s home state has established like requirements for licensing a West Virginian as a non-resident adjuster. A resident of Canada may hold one, but only after obtaining a resident or home state adjuster license in another United States jurisdiction.

Read at code.wvlegislature.gov on 2026-08-19

33-12B-5(b)(6), written as a duty rather than an option: an adjuster who moves here "shall make application within 90 days of establishing legal residence". No pre-licensing examination is required for any line of authority previously held, except where the commissioner determines otherwise by rule. 33-12B-9(c) says the same thing from the other direction, for a non-resident licensee who becomes a resident.

Read at code.wvlegislature.gov on 2026-08-19