The Wisconsin Surplus Lines license
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.
Course
None
This license has no pre-licensing course route.
Ways in
2
None of them requires a state exam, because this license has none.
Exam
n/a
Not required on any of the routes below.
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. There is no pre-licensing course among them: this license is qualified for by a license already held or a license held in another state.
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Route 1 Hold property and casualty, then add surplus lines
No state exam for this license
The license underneath it
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an active Wisconsin intermediary license carrying the property and casualty lines of authority
and competence in the subject, and a bond if the commissioner asks
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A showing to the commissioner's satisfaction that, on top of the qualifications for a general intermediary license, the applicant has the competence to deal with the problems of surplus lines insurance. The commissioner may by rule require a bond of not more than $100,000 conditioned on proper performance of the obligations of a surplus lines agent or broker.
s. 628.04(2) is the granting sentence and it issues this as a class of the intermediary license rather than as a license of its own kind: the commissioner "may issue a license as an agent or broker authorized to place business under s. 618.41" on the general qualifications plus the competence to deal with surplus lines problems. There is no separate examination anywhere in it, and the examination vendor's nine Wisconsin papers include none for surplus lines. What the licensee then owes is in s. 618.41 and s. Ins 6.17: a completed surplus lines proposal to the policyholder, a stamped legend on every policy naming the 3 percent premium tax under s. 618.43(1), and five years of records open to the commissioner without notice.
Read at docs.legis.wisconsin.gov on 2026-08-19
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Route 2 Hold an active surplus lines license in the home state
No state exam for this license
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an active surplus lines license in the applicant's resident state
The Office asks a nonresident for the home state license and nothing else. A resident is asked for the property and casualty lines first, so the two routes are not the same requirement in two places.
Read at the Department on 2026-08-19
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No national seller sells a course for this license. The Wisconsin products sellers do carry are all for a major producer line or for the adjuster paper; Aceable sells nothing in Wisconsin at all. Wisconsin gives no surplus lines paper: the qualification is the property and casualty license underneath it, and products for that sit on those license pages.