In My Uniformity Era: Inside the Update of the NAIC’s Uniform Licensing Application

If you’ve seen a notice from the National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR) about a brief system outage beginning at 4 p.m. Central on April 9 and extending into April 10, it’s worth a closer look. This short pause supports a major milestone for the industry—the launch of one of the most significant updates to the insurance licensing application process in more than a decade.

On April 10, NIPR will launch the newly updated NAIC Uniform Licensing Application—the application formerly known as the Uniform Producer Licensing Application—and the change isn’t just cosmetic. The update brings the industry clearer background questions, new disclosure requirements, and a name that reflects the breadth of just how many people in different roles actually use the application.

To help understand the changes and what they mean for the industry (and why this is more than a routine outage), AgentSync’s Manager of Content Marketing, Regina Stephenson, sat down for a Q&A with Cari Lee, Senior Director of State Regulatory Affairs for Insurance Regulation, Compliance and Policy at NIPR. Cari brings both regulatory and operational expertise to the conversation—she’s a former regulator herself—and her enthusiasm for getting this right is, frankly, contagious.

Here’s what she had to say. (Interview has been edited for length)

Regina: Let’s start at the beginning. Where did the Uniform Licensing Application come from?

Cari: The NAIC Uniform Producer Licensing Application—which we now call the Uniform Licensing Application—is the application that has been adopted by the full National Association of Insurance Commissioners, or NAIC, membership, meaning all 54 jurisdictions’ commissioners or insurance authorities agree to use it, and that first was adopted in 2002. But to understand how we got here, we actually have to back up even further.

In 1999, Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which established a federal framework encouraging reciprocity in producer licensing. That really forced the states to get more consistent in their standards or risk direct federal intervention. So, in 2000, the NAIC created the Producer Licensing Model Act—the PLMA—which gave states a shared framework to support reciprocity and consistent licensing practices. That’s still foundational legislation today. Then in 2002, the Uniform Application was implemented by a licensing working group and was designed to give applicants a shared set of questions and disclosures that would be the same no matter what jurisdiction they applied in. 

Before that, you could imagine having to navigate completely different application processes in every state. It would have been quite the undertaking.

Regina: Absolutely. I understand that it was a mess of manual paperwork to get licensed in all the states and stay compliant. So the Uniform Application was a massive upgrade; why are we seeing changes to it now? 

Cari: The NAIC’s Licensing Working Group revisits it every two years—not necessarily to make changes every time, but to decide whether it needs to change in reaction to evolving regulations across the country. One of the big drivers behind the 2024 updates was clarity. Between 2014, which was the last update to the application, and now, states would make their own changes to the application by asking non-uniform background questions, which sometimes meant asking the same things in different ways.

Regulators recognized that the non-uniform language was leading to inconsistent disclosures—people just weren’t sure whether they had to disclose something or how to disclose it correctly. That’s not great for anyone.

The other major goal of this change is to support nationwide licensing standards—reciprocity and uniformity. It’s not about changing things just to change them. It’s about aligning with national standards, making sure every state can actually implement the updates, and creating something stable and predictable for applicants. In 2018, the NAIC also established a formal amendment framework specifically to make this process more structured and less disruptive when updates do happen.

Regina: Let’s talk about the specific changes that were adopted in 2024—would you walk us through?

Cari: There are three big ones I’d highlight. The first is the new citizenship question. This question already existed on the initial individual application, but it’s now been added to the individual renewal application as well. And for non-citizens applying for a resident license, there’s now a requirement to provide official proof of eligibility to work in the United States—that documentation can be uploaded to the NIPR Attachment Warehouse during the application process. This question was one that several states asked as a non-uniform question before, and other states don’t want to know. Now, it’s on there, and states can act on the information or disregard it according to their own state regulatory needs.

The second big change is the addition of the FINRA CRD number—that’s the Central Registration Depository number through the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the federal body that oversees securities licensing. It’s now required on both individual and business entity renewal applications. This gives regulators the ability to cross-reference an applicant’s federal licensing history and flag anything that might warrant a closer look.

The third area is the refined background and legal questions. The application now includes clearer, more specific questions about criminal history—including a re-definition of what constitutes a conviction—as well as administrative proceedings and financial status. The attestation language at the bottom, where applicants swear to the accuracy of their statements, has also been updated to be more precise and transparent. The whole goal is to make sure applicants using the Uniform Licensing Application don’t find themselves saying, “I didn’t know I needed to disclose that.”

Regina: Speaking of the name change, it’s now the Uniform Licensing Application, not the Uniform Producer Licensing Application. Why is that significant?

Cari: It’s a really smart move by the regulators, honestly. The application has been used for a lot more than just producers for a while now—we’re talking adjusters, pharmacy benefit managers, third-party administrators, all kinds of new license classes that regulators are now overseeing. Calling it the “producer” application was causing confusion. An adjuster might look at it and wonder, “Am I in the right place? Is there a separate adjuster application?” It’s a simple thing, but it’s exactly the kind of thing that trips people up and leads to calls to the state departments of insurance.

The rename is really just an acknowledgment of reality—this is the application for licensing, period. And the broader push is to bring as much of this process online and make it as accessible as possible. Regulators genuinely do not want to be processing paper applications, or paper checks anymore, and NIPR gives them the opportunity to leave that behind.

Regina: Let’s talk about implementation. How do you actually take a change like this and roll it out across 54 jurisdictions simultaneously?

Cari: I really wish I could tell you it was like a magician whipping off a tablecloth—and there you go, new application! But it is genuinely one of the most complex coordination efforts you can imagine.

At NIPR, we don’t set policy. Our role is to implement what the NAIC and state regulators decide, to take federal law into account, and to ask every single day, “How do we make this process as easy as possible for people applying in multiple states?”

When the application was formally adopted at the NAIC’s November 2024 national meeting, our Chief Technology Officer, Eric Saul, testified before the Producer Licensing Task Force and explained that we had technical foundational work to complete before we could tackle the application itself. We started that internal work in October 2025, formed a project committee, brought in a dedicated project manager, and have been working—I mean, really working—for over a year to get to April 10.

Our CTO described it like this: Imagine trying to organize a group outing for 20 people where everyone has to be at the same place, at the same time, and agree on everything in advance. That’s already hard. Now multiply that complexity by 54 jurisdictions, all of our industry partners, and all of our resellers. We estimated we’ve put in over 4,000 work hours on this project. We ran webinars for state regulators and industry partners, sent early-bird notifications followed by 90-, 60-, and 30-day reminders, and made direct phone calls to our “code-your-own” states—those with legacy systems that needed extra testing—starting in January. Everyone has to go live at the same time. The last thing we want is for an applicant to submit through an old application format and have to start over.

Regina: So, April 10, we’ll have a new Uniform Licensing Application, and producers and licensees will have fewer nonuniform questions to contend with, what’s next?

Cari: A charge for the Producer Licensing Task Force in 2026 is to do their regular two-year review of the Uniform Application. Now that these changes are going live, they’ll want to see how they’re working, whether they’ve had the desired effect, and whether any further refinements are needed. Now that the NAIC’s infrastructure for making changes is solid, I think we’ll see a more steady, predictable cadence. And NIPR will be ready. We welcome the changes because ultimately, they make things better for the whole industry.

AgentSync sources licensing and appointment data directly from NIPR. During NIPR’s maintenance window on April 9–10, licensing and appointment transactions will be temporarily unavailable. For questions about how this affects your workflows, contact your AgentSync CSM.

About NIPR

NIPR is a not-for-profit technology company with the goal of streamlining the producer licensing process. Governed by a Board of Directors representing state insurance regulators and members of the insurance industry, NIPR is an affiliate of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. www.NIPR.com