Getting an insurance license in Wisconsin
Wisconsin licenses through the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance, which calls the licensee an intermediary. Which license you need depends on what you intend to sell, and the requirements differ sharply between them.
License types
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Accident and Health or Sickness
Sells accident, health and sickness cover in Wisconsin.
20 hrs
4 courses from $79.95
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Attorney Title
A title insurance limited license Wisconsin issues only to Wisconsin lawyers who live here. It is the one Wisconsin license whose course is not approved by the insurance regulator: six hours of continuing legal education on title insurance, approved by the Board of Bar Examiners, inside the year before the application.
6 hrs
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Casualty
Sells casualty insurance in Wisconsin.
20 hrs
5 courses from $79.95
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Certified Application Counselor
Helps consumers fill in exchange applications from a hospital, a clinic, a health department or a social service agency, without being paid by the exchange to do it. Wisconsin registers rather than licenses it, and then asks for exactly the navigator's sixteen hours and the navigator's paper.
16 hrs
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Credit
A Wisconsin limited line the Office exempts from pre-licensing education.
No course
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Crop
A Wisconsin limited line the Office exempts from pre-licensing education and from the examination alike.
No course
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Employee Benefit Plan Administrator
Collects premiums or settles claims for somebody else's employee benefit plan. Wisconsin licenses the administrator and the pharmacy benefit manager out of the same chapter, and which of the two licenses a company needs turns on whether it touches the money.
No course
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Legal Expense
A Wisconsin limited line the Office exempts from pre-licensing education and from the examination alike.
No course
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Life Settlement Broker
Negotiates the sale of a life policy for the person who owns it. It carries the most expensive license fee in Wisconsin, a million dollars of professional liability cover, and eight hours of training before the application, which is one of only four course requirements the state has.
8 hrs
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Life
Sells life insurance in Wisconsin.
20 hrs
4 courses from $79.95
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Managing General Agent
Manages all or part of an insurer's book in Wisconsin and produces or underwrites enough of it to matter. The threshold is in the definition rather than in the license: five percent of the insurer's policyholder surplus in a quarter or a year, plus claims or reinsurance authority.
No course
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Navigator Entity
The organization that employs or supervises navigators and takes the federal grant. What Wisconsin asks of it is policies, a named responsible navigator and an acceptance of legal responsibility for what its people do, rather than anything a person could study.
No course
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Navigator Individual
Helps Wisconsin consumers work out what they qualify for and enroll on the federal exchange. It is a license rather than a registration, it needs sixteen hours of prelicensing training and a paper of its own, and it is the only Wisconsin license whose statute calls the work the business of insurance while forbidding the holder to sell any.
16 hrs
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Personal Lines
Sells the household half of property and casualty in Wisconsin.
20 hrs
5 courses from $109.95
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Pharmacy Benefit Manager
Administers or manages prescription drug benefits for an insurer or another payer without collecting premium or touching claims. A manager that does touch them takes the employee benefit plan administrator license instead, and the statute says so rather than leaving it to be worked out.
No course
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Property
Sells property insurance in Wisconsin.
20 hrs
5 courses from $79.95
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Public Adjuster
Prepares and negotiates a first-party property claim for the insured rather than the insurer. Wisconsin registers it rather than licensing it, and the registration is compulsory for a nonresident and optional for a Wisconsin resident, which nothing else on this site does.
No course
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Rate Service Organization
Collects loss and expense statistics for insurers and files rates or advises on them. It is the only Wisconsin license on this site whose holder never faces a consumer, and at $400 it costs four times what the Office charges for a surplus lines license.
No course
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Reinsurance Intermediary Broker
Places reinsurance cessions for a ceding insurer without the power to bind the reinsurer. Wisconsin licenses it out of the administrative code rather than the statutes, and reaches brokers working from other states as well as this one.
No course
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Reinsurance Intermediary Manager
Binds or manages assumed reinsurance business for a reinsurer, which is the half of the trade that carries authority. The same rule licenses it, on the same fee, and the difference is who the intermediary answers to.
No course
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Surety
A Wisconsin limited line the Office exempts from pre-licensing education and from the examination alike.
No course
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Surplus Lines
Places business with insurers Wisconsin has not authorized. The statute makes it a second kind of intermediary license rather than a separate trade, and the Office stacks it on an active property and casualty license and charges the same $100 every year to keep it.
No course
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Temporary Intermediary
Twelve months of somebody else's agency, issued to the personal representative of an intermediary who has died or become disabled, or to the person an intermediary designates on entering the armed forces. It cannot be renewed and it cannot outlive the sale of the business.
No course
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Title
A Wisconsin limited line the Office exempts from pre-licensing education.
No course
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Travel Insurance Firm
The license a travel retailer sells under. Wisconsin calls it a Limited Travel Insurance Firm license and the statute calls it a limited lines travel insurance producer license, and its own subsection then exempts both the firm and every retailer under it from any examination or education at all.
No course
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Travel
A Wisconsin limited line the Office exempts from pre-licensing education and from the examination alike.
No course
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Variable Life and Variable Annuity
Sells insurance written under variable life contracts and variable annuities in Wisconsin. It is one of the six major lines the Office names and the only one of them with no examination and no pre-licensing course: what stands in for both is a life license and a securities registration.
No course
Is a course required?
Wisconsin requires pre-licensing education for Property, Personal Lines, Casualty, Life, Accident and Health or Sickness , at 20 hours.
Twenty hours split 8 and 12. The 8 hours of principles, general Wisconsin insurance law and ethics carry across every line applied for inside a 12-month window, so a second line costs 12 hours rather than 20. The other 12 are policies, terms and line-specific law. A course taken at any time rather than in real time also requires a proctored exam of its own, which is not the state exam. The certificate lasts a year and has to be produced at the test center or the exam cannot be sat and the exam fee is not refunded. Ins 26.04(2) is a closed list of who does not have to take it, and it is the whole of the answer: the six limited lines, a nonresident, a two-year Wisconsin vocational school degree in insurance, a four-year business degree with an insurance emphasis, a reinsurance intermediary or managing general agent, an agent who held the same line as a resident of another state within the last twelve months, and a per-line list of professional designations. Only the twelve-month agent is excused the examination too, and the rule says so in as many words where it means it. Every exemption is a request the Office has to approve, ninety days before the exam date. The Office's own page adds one the rule does not carry, for veterans who obtained insurance instruction in connection with military service, and no route here is built on it.
Read at the Department on 2026-08-15 . ch. Ins 26, Wis. Adm. Code, s. Ins 26.04
Wisconsin requires no pre-licensing course for Title, Credit, Crop, Surety, Travel, Legal Expense.
The Office lists these limited lines as exempt from the pre-licensing education requirement. A sourced zero, not an absence. Title and credit still require an examination; crop, surety, travel and legal expense do not.
Read at the Department on 2026-08-13
Wisconsin requires pre-licensing education for Navigator Individual, Certified Application Counselor , at 16 hours.
Sixteen hours of prelicensing training and an approved written examination before the application, and eight hours of approved training every year afterwards. The Office breaks the sixteen into eight hours of principles of insurance, Wisconsin insurance law, ethics and health insurance, four of Wisconsin public assistance programs and four of the Affordable Care Act, and adds that a self-study course carries its own proctored examination on top of the state paper. It reaches the certified application counselor by cross-reference rather than by its own words: s. 628.96 (2) says counselors "shall be required to meet the training and examination requirements set forth in s. 628.92 (7)", which puts sixteen hours on somebody the state registers rather than licenses. The Office names two alternatives to a classroom course that no other state here offers: the annual Wisconsin Health Insurance Enrollment Conference counts for both the prelicensing and the annual training, and a licensed agent moving across may take a one-day Medicaid training the Office runs with the Department of Health Services instead.
Read at docs.legis.wisconsin.gov on 2026-08-19 . s. 628.92 (7), Wis. Stats., reaching the counselor through s. 628.96 (2)
Wisconsin requires pre-licensing education for Life Settlement Broker , at 8 hours.
An initial training course of not less than eight hours, confirmed electronically with the application, and four hours every twenty-four months after it. The Office states the continuing half annually instead, two hours within each renewal period, which is the same rate written to the yearly cycle the license runs on. It is a condition of the license rather than a condition of practice: s. 632.69 (2) (g) 7 puts it in the list of findings the commissioner must make before issuing one. There is no examination.
Read at the Department on 2026-08-19 . s. 632.69 (3) (e), Wis. Stats.
Wisconsin requires pre-licensing education for Attorney Title , at 6 hours.
Six hours of continuing legal education dealing solely with title insurance, completed within one year of the application date. It is the only course requirement on this site approved by a body outside the insurance regulator and outside insurance altogether: the Wisconsin Board of Bar Examiners approves it, and the Office asks for a copy of the applicant's State Bar of Wisconsin membership card with it. The sourced zero above is about pre-licensing education under s. Ins 26.04 (2) and this is continuing legal education, so the two sit side by side without contradicting each other. The license is issued to Wisconsin residents only.
Read at the Department on 2026-08-19
Fees
| Charge | Paid to | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Initial license fee, per line of authority Charged per line of authority, so two lines is twice this. The same $75 is the managing general agent's and each reinsurance intermediary's whole initial fee, and s. 628.09 (5) sets the temporary license at the permanent one's figure. | Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance | $75.00 |
| Application fee Residents only, on an intermediary license application. | Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance | $10.00 |
| Surplus lines license, annual $100 to apply and $100 a year to renew, on the last day of the agent's birth month. It is the only Wisconsin intermediary license on an annual cycle rather than a biennial one, and it is not eligible for reinstatement. | Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance | $100.00 |
| Public adjuster registration, biennial $50 to register and $50 to renew every two years, on top of a $20,000 surety bond. The examination is $50 as well, which is the vendor's charge rather than the Office's. | Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance | $50.00 |
| Individual navigator license s. 601.31 (1) (nm), $75 to issue and $35 to renew annually on 1 October, with reinstatement at $70 inside twelve months. | Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance | $75.00 |
| Navigator entity registration, annual s. 601.31 (1) (np), $100 initially and $100 each year, and no reinstatement. | Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance | $100.00 |
| Administrator or pharmacy benefit manager license, annual s. 601.31 (1) (w) prices both licenses in one paragraph, $100 for initial issuance and $100 for each annual renewal, due 1 August. | Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance | $100.00 |
| Life settlement broker license $750 to apply and $250 a year to renew, due 1 July. It is the largest initial license fee Wisconsin charges an individual, and a license that lapses is not reinstated: the broker pays the $750 again. | Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance | $750.00 |
| Rate service organization license s. 601.31 (1) (a) 2 and (b) 2, with $100 annually under (c) 2 and (k) 2. | Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance | $400.00 |
| Limited travel insurance firm license $100 initially, then $35 biennially for a resident or $70 for a nonresident, due 15 February of every even-numbered year. | Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance | $100.00 |
| Firm license, per entity An intermediary firm, a managing general agent firm, a reinsurance intermediary firm and a life settlement broker firm each pay $100 to apply. It is the entity form of a license an individual already holds rather than a second charge on the individual, so no route on this site is costed with it. Wisconsin does not require a firm to be licensed at all: the Office states that the option is available and that authority to transact rests with the designated responsible licensed producer. | Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance | $100.00 |
| Certified application counselor registration Searched and not published. The Office's certified application counselor registration page carries the requirements and no amount. Wis. Stat. 628.96(2) does the work by cross-reference rather than by pricing: "In addition to the requirements of this section, certified application counselors, as established by 45 CFR 155.225, shall be required to meet the training and examination requirements", which sends the qualification to federal law and leaves the state charging for nothing it sets. The amount is left unread rather than guessed. | Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance | Not confirmed |
Every amount above was read at its own source between 2026-08-19 and 2026-09-05. Exam and fingerprint charges go to a vendor, not to the Department, and say so.
Approved courses
Wisconsin approves both the provider and the course, and publishes a lookup covering both. The Office sends applicants to the NAIC external lookup, where a Wisconsin pre-licensing search returns 63 approved courses from 15 providers, each with its own course number, hour count and delivery method. Exemptions run wider than a designation list: a two-year Wisconsin technical college insurance degree, a four-year business degree with an insurance emphasis, and instruction received in military service all qualify, alongside the usual per-line designations. Read again on 2026-08-19 for the licenses the Office publishes beyond the producer lines, and it covers the navigator too: the Office sends navigator and certified application counselor candidates to the same NAIC lookup for both prelicensing and continuing education. What it does not cover is the other two course requirements. The eight hours of life settlement training are approved by the commissioner and no list of approved courses is published, and the attorney title line's six hours are approved by the Wisconsin Board of Bar Examiners, which is a different regulator with its own list. You can search it at external-lookup-web.prod.naic.org .