Insurance Adjusters
Insurance Adjuster Licensing, State by State
Sixteen states do not license independent adjusters at all. If you live in one, you have to designate another state instead, and that single choice sets what you pay for the rest of your career. Start with where you live.
New to this? Start with how to choose a designated home state, including the four states to avoid and the trap inside the most popular answer.
Where do you live?
Your actual state of residence, not where you want to work. That is what decides this.
Every state, and what it licenses
There is no maintained list of this anywhere, including at the NAIC, whose own published counts disagree with each other. We built this one from each state's statutes and rules. Where a state never states its own position, which is common, the row says how we established it.
| Jurisdiction | Independent | Public | Company or staff | Serves as home state | Confidence |
|---|
"Independent" means adjusters who contract to insurers. "Public" means adjusters who represent policyholders. A state can license one and not the other, and 15 of the 16 that do not license independent adjusters still license public ones, so "my state does not regulate adjusters" is wrong every time it is said. Every jurisdiction name opens its own page below.
What each state asks of you
You hold a home state license, or a designated one. This is what a second state wants before it will license you, what it costs to keep, and what goes wrong. Written from each department's own rules and statutes, one state at a time. The sixteen that issue no independent adjuster license are here too, because knowing there is nothing to buy is worth as much as knowing the price, and because what those states do still regulate catches people out.
Or open any state as its own page
Every jurisdiction has a standing page with the same profile, which is easier to link, share or print. 51 of them.
Alabama · Alaska · Arizona · Arkansas · California · Colorado · Connecticut · Delaware · District of Columbia · Florida · Georgia · Hawaii · Idaho · Illinois · Indiana · Iowa · Kansas · Kentucky · Louisiana · Maine · Maryland · Massachusetts · Michigan · Minnesota · Mississippi · Missouri · Montana · Nebraska · Nevada · New Hampshire · New Jersey · New Mexico · New York · North Carolina · North Dakota · Ohio · Oklahoma · Oregon · Pennsylvania · Rhode Island · South Carolina · South Dakota · Tennessee · Texas · Utah · Vermont · Virginia · Washington · West Virginia · Wisconsin · Wyoming
Why this choice matters more than it looks
Florida says so in writing, excluding designated home state holders from a reciprocity list it grants everyone else. Oklahoma refuses designations from states with no continuing education requirement outright. And the pattern runs deeper than either: states routinely accept your home state's continuing education if you are an ordinary nonresident, then withhold that same relief from their own designated licensees. Texas, Florida and Alabama all say so in words.
Entry is paid once. Continuing education is paid forever. Texas is the most popular choice in the country and gives designated licensees none of the continuing education relief it gives ordinary nonresidents, so a $50 application becomes 24 hours a year with a classroom requirement and an automatic fine for shortfalls.
Every nonresident license you hold hangs off it. Let it lapse and they terminate with it and must be surrendered. Louisiana puts that cascade directly into statute.
What we could not settle
Named plainly, because a gap you know about is worth more than a confident guess.
- Whether other states accept Nevada's three-year continuing education cycle. It would be the cheapest option over five years if they do.
- Why Oklahoma leaves Georgia off its accepted list when Georgia meets Oklahoma's own stated requirement.
- Whether Montana genuinely serves as a home state. It is the one state named by the NAIC that is missing from another state's accepted roster.
- What happens to an existing designation when your resident state starts licensing. We have exactly one documented answer, and it is not a reassuring one. New Mexico non-renews designated holders once their real home state becomes adequate. Whether other states do the same is still open, so a designation should not be treated as permanent.
- Why Wyoming's published acceptance list omits Alaska, which meets the standard on its face.