- Introduction to Getting LicensedLesson 11:05
- What Type of Insurance License?Lesson 22:59
- Who Qualifies?Lesson 31:10
- Back to SchoolLesson 41:12
- I Passed! Now What?Lesson 50:49
- Keeping Your License CurrentLesson 61:58
- Next StepsLesson 71:07
What Type of Insurance License?
As you embark on your new career, one of the first decisions you’ll make is what type of insurance you’d like to sell.
Insurance licenses are broken down into categories by type of product or service. This allows each exam to contain specific questions that are relative to that part of the industry.
On the service side, there’s a category just for adjustors, the people who assess damages and losses for insurance companies.
The other categories are more product related, for example, limited lines, which are the smaller insurance industries like car rental, credit, or travel insurance to mention a few.
Then there’s property and casualty, usually abbreviated to p and c, which is a larger, main line of insurance. Think auto, renters, and homeowners insurance for example.
The other main category of insurance is life and health.
Here at Ritter, we specialize in the senior health and life market, so our focus in these lessons will be on the life and health segment of the industry.
For this license category, you have the choice to get licensed to sell health or life insurance products, or both life and health.
So, if you want to sell Medicare products exclusively, you’ll only need your health insurance license to do that.
Life insurance can be a great cross-selling opportunity with health insurance because the products often come up in conversation about retirement and life planning.
If you know prior to licensing that you’d like to offer life insurance products, it’s wise to get your life insurance license at the same time.
But again, it all comes down to the products you want to sell.
The next item to consider is residency. Do you live where you’ll be selling?
Regardless, you will need to get licensed in your resident state first.
Then, as your business grows or, based on your geographical location, you may find it beneficial to get non-residential licenses as well. For example, if you live in Pennsylvania and start out selling in PA, after a year or two, you might expand into New Jersey, New York, or Maryland.
Keep in mind, just like your resident license, the process for adding non-residential licenses will change depending on the state. We recommend referring to each state’s Department of Insurance website, the National Insurance Producer Registry online, or WebCE, our partner for educational insurance trainings.
All of those sites include helpful information on requirements and qualifications. And speaking of qualifications, we’ll be talking about that in our next lesson.
See you there!
