Insurance Adjuster License in Florida
Florida charges nothing to renew the license and $60 every two years to renew the appointment that makes it work, and a license left unappointed for 48 months does not lapse, it ceases to exist.
About $211 if you have to sit the exam, which adds $44 to the vendor, and there is no license renewal fee at all, only the $60 biennial appointment plus a 3.3 percent card convenience fee.
Getting licensed in Florida
- On your home license
- Yes. The 7-20 nonresident all-lines license is issued on the strength of a company or independent adjuster license, resident or nonresident, from a state Florida has a reciprocal agreement with. Florida also accepts four other qualifications in place of that license, and each one carries the same exam exemption.
- Exam
- Waived if your home state sits on the exam exemption column of Florida's reciprocity table, which lists 31 jurisdictions, and Florida requires that you actually passed an equivalent adjuster examination there rather than merely holding the license. Also waived by any of thirteen named designations, by an insurance degree carrying at least 18 semester hours in property, casualty, health and commercial insurance, or by a current Florida General Lines agent license. Otherwise required at $44 to the vendor, and note that Florida wants the application first and then authorizes the exam through MyProfile, the reverse of the Texas and Alabama pattern. The reciprocity route is not available to 70-20 designated home state applicants.
- Prelicensing
- None for nonresidents. Florida prescribes no prelicensing hours as a standalone requirement, and the designations substitute for the exam rather than feeding into it.
- Fingerprints
- Mandatory, with no nonresident exemption of any kind, at $49.50 through Idemia, itemized as $24.00 FDLE, $12.00 FBI and $13.50 vendor, plus possible Florida county sales tax. Idemia runs a national livescan network so out-of-state printing is structurally plausible, but nothing DFS publishes addresses an out-of-state applicant directly, so confirm before you book.
- Processing time
- Not published. DFS describes a status flow rather than a standard. It does not usually reject, it posts a deficiency against the pending license type in MyProfile and waits, so an applicant who does not check the account can sit in deficiency indefinitely without hearing anything.
- Designated home state
- Two different questions, and Florida answers only one of them. On its own 70-20 designated home state license, Florida is emphatic that the reciprocity table does not apply, stating the exclusion three separate times on the same page, and every 70-20 holder must complete Florida continuing education with no exemption available. The 70-20 also has a hard entry gate, because you must hold no resident and no designated license in any state, and it is open to a company or staff adjuster living in a state that licenses only independent adjusters, a population with no other designated home state route open to it. On the separate question of whether Florida will accept ANOTHER state's designated home state license as the qualifying credential for a 7-20, nothing is established. The 7-20 sheet asks for a company or independent adjuster license, resident or nonresident, and never uses the phrase designated home state where Texas, Indiana and Louisiana all do. The plain reading is favorable and no contrary statement was found, but it is an inference, so ask DFS before you spend the money.
What Florida costs you to keep
- Continuing education
- Depends how you qualified 24 hours every two years, due by the end of your birth month, built as a 4 hour Law and Ethics update, course authority 5-620, plus 20 electives. The 4 hour ethics subset is above the 3 hours most of the country requires. Whether you owe any of it turns on a separate column of the reciprocity table from the one that governs the exam. Complete a continuing education requirement in one of the 26 jurisdictions on the continuing education column and you owe Florida nothing. Come from one of the six states that sit on the exam column but not the continuing education column, namely Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, South Carolina and Vermont, or from a state on neither column, and all 24 hours apply on Florida's birth month calendar. Hold the Florida 70-20 and Florida's hours apply always, with no route out.
- If you fall short
- A $250 continuing education fine, payable through MyProfile only after DFS receives a signed settlement stipulation and posts the consent order to your account. That is a process with a document to sign and a discretionary element rather than an automatic charge, unlike the Texas per-hour model. The harder lever is the appointment, because an unappointed license is inactive whatever your hours look like.
- Renewal clock
- Your birth month, for both the $60 appointment renewal and the continuing education deadline
- The point of no return
- The renewal invoice is available for 45 days from the start of the month following your renewal month. Miss it and the appointment is canceled for non-renewal automatically, with no discretion in it, and email notice goes to the appointing entity and to you. Cancellation starts a 48 month clock under Fla. Stat. 626.431(3), and at the end of it there is no lapsed license to reinstate, there is no license. Recovery is a fresh application, fresh fingerprints at $49.50, and the exam again unless one of the qualifications still applies. Nothing notifies you at month 47.
- Lines of authority
- One all-lines credential and no sub-lines. Florida sells the 7-20 and then governs scope through the appointment, which comes in three forms, independent adjuster, company employee adjuster and public adjuster apprentice. You may hold only one appointment at a time, so an adjuster who wants independent contract work for one carrier and staff work for another cannot do both in Florida. That is a lines-of-authority constraint expressed as an appointment constraint, which is why no fifty-state comparison table catches it. You also cannot hold more than one Florida adjuster license at a time, so a 7-20 holder cannot simply add a 70-20. The 73-20 nonresident public adjuster is a separate credential and the reciprocity table expressly excludes it.
- Storm and catastrophe work
- Your carrier files The 0-70 emergency adjuster license can be filed only by Florida-licensed insurance companies and independent adjusting firms, through the appointing entity's own MyProfile account. Individuals cannot apply, and unusually neither can public adjusting firms, so a public adjusting firm working a hurricane has no emergency route at all. You cannot cure a carrier's omission, because there is nothing an individual is permitted to file. The application does not even exist most of the time, appearing only when the Department determines an emergency situation exists, which is a departmental determination rather than a gubernatorial declaration. Cost is $65 per adjuster, made up of $50 application, $5 license ID, $10 appointment and a flat $2.45 convenience fee. One applicant with a criminal history or work-authorized alien status in a batch upload rejects the entire filing, and the entity must certify that you can correctly operate its own claims software. Holding a 7-20 already, at about $167 for a portable two-year credential, is the only route you control, and it pays for itself in roughly three deployments.
What to watch in Florida
DFS states this three times in three different places on the reciprocity page, so it is not an oversight. Every holder of the 70-20 must complete Florida's 24 hours, because the relief is written as having completed a requirement in a reciprocal state and a 70-20 holder's home state is Florida itself. If you pick Florida as your designated home state you are buying into Florida continuing education permanently.
Florida separates exam exemption from continuing education reciprocity, 31 jurisdictions on the first and 26 on the second, and being on one buys you nothing on the other. Six states sit on the exam column but not the continuing education column, namely Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, South Carolina and Vermont, and California is the reverse case, on the continuing education column but not the exam column. The page carries no revision date and the lists have demonstrably moved since our previous pass, so read both columns yourself before relying on either.
There is no license renewal fee in Florida, which reads like good news until you notice that the appointment is what makes the license active and only one appointment is allowed at a time. An adjuster dropped by an appointing firm is inactive immediately and starts a four year countdown. Nothing warns you, and at the end the license is gone rather than lapsed.
DFS says its system periodically checks NIPR to see whether your non-Florida licenses are in good standing, which is active ongoing enforcement rather than a self-certification at renewal. A lapse back home can surface as a Florida continuing education demand without you doing anything. The first sign of trouble is an email about your Florida continuing education status.
What you actually do
- Look your home state up in BOTH columns of Florida's nonresident all-lines adjuster reciprocity table, because the exam answer and the continuing education answer are independent and six states sit on one column but not the other.
- If your state is off the exam column, pick another qualification instead, either one of the thirteen named designations evidenced by an original letter from the awarding institution, an insurance degree with at least 18 semester hours evidenced by an official transcript, or a current Florida General Lines agent license, and email the proof to AgentLicensing@MyFloridaCFO.com.
- Apply through DFS MyProfile FIRST, before any exam, paying $50 application, $5 license ID and a $2.45 card fee. Members of the armed forces, their spouses and honorably discharged veterans are exempt from the $50 application fee on request with documentation. Every fee is nonrefundable under four separate statutes, so settle your eligibility before you pay.
- Get fingerprinted through Idemia at $49.50, and confirm with DFS whether an out-of-state livescan will be accepted against the Florida service code before you book anything.
- If you need the exam, wait for the authorization to appear in your MyProfile messages, follow those instructions to schedule, and pay $44 to the testing vendor. Do not sit it first and apply afterward.
- Secure your appointment and pay $60, because the license is inactive without one, and be aware that a missed original appointment carries a $250 late fee against $25 for a late renewal.
- Check MyProfile for posted deficiencies rather than waiting to hear from DFS, then diary your birth month for the biennial appointment renewal and the 45 day invoice window that follows it.
Where this comes from
Keep going
- The adjuster planner, which asks where you live and ranks your options.
- How to choose a designated home state, including the four to avoid.
- All three professions we cover, and what we have verified so far.
Every other jurisdiction
Licenses independent adjusters
Alabama · Alaska · Arizona · Arkansas · California · Connecticut · Delaware · Georgia · Hawaii · Idaho · Indiana · Iowa · Kentucky · Louisiana · Maine · Michigan · Minnesota · Mississippi · Montana · Nevada · New Hampshire · New Mexico · New York · North Carolina · Oklahoma · Oregon · Rhode Island · South Carolina · Texas · Utah · Vermont · Washington · West Virginia · Wyoming
Issues no independent adjuster license
Colorado · District of Columbia · Illinois · Kansas · Maryland · Massachusetts · Missouri · Nebraska · New Jersey · North Dakota · Ohio · Pennsylvania · South Dakota · Tennessee · Virginia · Wisconsin