

Insurance agents and dually licensed broker-dealers who work with both insurance and securities products are subject to a lot of educational requirements from a lot of different directions.
First, there’s the licensing exams (and pre-course work that comes with them in some states). Then there’re continuing education (CE) requirements before you can renew your license. On top of that, there are even more training requirements that consist of product-specific training that insurance carriers provide.
Confused or overwhelmed yet? For an easy way to reference what types of CE you need, when you need it, how often, in which states, and so much more, visit our (free!) Compliance Library. In this article, we’ll talk about the basics of continuing education versus carrier product training requirements (as well as when they may overlap) for insurance agents and broker-dealers.
What’s insurance continuing education?
Continuing education (CE) is the name for the required ongoing education that all insurance agents, producers, and dually licensed broker-dealers have to complete to keep their licenses in good standing.
We’ve covered this in depth before (examples: here and here), but the long and short of it is that each state and each type of insurance license has specific requirements. What you need, how much of it you need, and how often you need it varies based on your resident state and license type(s).
Did we mention we have a state-by-state guide to CE (and a ton of other state requirements) here?
Furthermore, the language surrounding CE can get a bit fuzzy because people tend to call the same thing by different names or different things by the same name (soda versus pop versus coke, anyone?)
To clarify the vocabulary for this article, we’ll be working off the following definitions:
- Continuing Education (CE): A general term for what states require licensed insurance agents, producers, and brokers to take. For example: A state may require 24 hours of CE every two years to qualify for license renewal.
- Suitability training: A subset of state-required CE that pertains to a specific insurance product. For example: A state may require one hour of flood insurance suitability training each year for a P&C producer to sell flood insurance.
- Note: This hour fulfills the suitability requirement and counts toward the larger number of CE hours the state requires.
- Carrier product training: Training the insurance carrier requires an agent to take on a specific product before an agent can begin selling. For example: An auto insurance carrier may require 30 minutes of training on their specific auto policy offerings.
- Note: There are some cases when a carrier’s product training could count toward a state’s general CE requirements. It’s very unlikely that a carrier’s product training would fulfill a state’s suitability training requirement.
What are insurance carrier training requirements?
Insurance carrier product training is additional education that insurance carriers provide to agents, producers, and brokers so the people selling their products are competently trained to do so, including understanding the nuances of more complicated products.
When it comes to carrier product training, each insurance carrier decides on and controls their own product training and training requirements. Depending on the carrier and which insurance products it sells, it may require no additional training beyond an insurance license, it may require some additional training, or it may require a lot of additional training.
In the case that a state requires a product-specific training, this is known as suitability training. While it’s product-specific (commonly found in annuities, flood insurance, and long-term care insurance), it’s rare that the carrier-provided training would meet the state’s educational requirements. If you’re left asking, “But why?”, one reason is that carriers are more concerned with the producer’s ability to understand the ins-and-outs of their specific products, while states are more concerned with a producer understanding their responsibilities to the consumer when selling the product.
Who needs insurance CE credits?
Every licensed insurance agent, producer, or dually licensed broker-dealer has to keep on top of continuing education as a condition of maintaining an active insurance license. There are a few exceptions, but they’re pretty rare. For all practical purposes, anyone licensed in insurance needs CE to keep their license active over time.
Who needs insurance carrier product training?
The answer depends on which carriers you’re working with and which products you’re selling. Since insurance carriers determine their own training requirements, it’s up to the carrier if they want to appoint producers to sell a product without any product-specific training, or how much product-specific training they require.
Products with state-required suitability training
Not to be confused with product training a carrier provides to fulfill their own standard before a producer can sell, there are a few lines of business for which states themselves require product-specific training. These are often referred to as suitability requirements, and, while it’s not impossible that a carrier could offer product training that meets the standards, these are most often offered through CE vendors.
Three common lines of business that have state-mandated suitability requirements (though not in every state) are annuities, flood insurance, and long-term care insurance.
Required training for annuities
In 2010, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) released its Suitability in Annuity Transactions Model Regulation, which set the standards for anyone selling annuities. In 2020, the NAIC revised its model regulation to include higher standards for making sure the products are in a client’s “best interest.” As of this writing, 40 states have adopted not only the original model legislation but the 2020 revised version that holds producers to an even higher standard of conduct.
As part of the NAIC’s model legislation, which most states follow, insurance producers and broker-dealers are required to complete four hours of annuity training before selling products. This mandatory four-hour class covers the different types of annuity products and compliant sales practices, among many other topics.
For the handful of states that haven’t adopted the NAIC model legislation, most still require at least four hours of training. California is a major outlier, requiring eight hours of initial training and a four-hour additional training every two years.
On top of all of that, most carriers require even more product training on their specific annuity products before a producer is allowed to conduct business. While those carrier-provided trainings may not count for the state-required credits, we fully support as much education as possible before sending someone off to sell annuities.
Required training for flood insurance
Homeowners commonly buy flood insurance through the government-backed National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Although private flood insurance is available, state requirements for additional flood insurance training are based on Section 207 of the Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2004, a law covering reforms to the NFIP.
As you might have guessed, each state does things a little bit differently – some going with the minimum mandatory training requirements and others going above and beyond. To help agents understand their flood insurance training responsibilities, the NFIP has collected each state’s published directions into one easy web page.
Required training for long-term care insurance
Long-term care insurance is another tricky and complex product, often dealing with an older and more vulnerable population. So, it makes sense that states want producers to be well-versed in its nuances before they’re allowed to sell it. Current regulations (which, of course, vary by state) come from both the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA) and the NAIC’s long-term care model act, first introduced in 1987.
Like many other state requirements for insurance agents and brokers, the training requirements to sell long-term care insurance are a minefield of rules, reciprocities, and exceptions. Most states have enacted the NAIC model legislation and reciprocate for nonresident producers who’ve met the requirements in their resident state, as long as it’s also following the NAIC standards. Other states do their own thing entirely, and don’t offer reciprocity. Meanwhile, a few states still don’t have any specific requirements for long-term care agents.
Most notably, California, Connecticut, Indiana, and New York are known as the “original four” because their own long-term care regulations predate both the DRA and the NAIC model act. According to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance, “The original 4 states are exceptions to every rule.”
Bottom line: Make sure to check your resident and nonresident states’ requirements before assuming you’re all set to sell long-term care insurance.
Other carrier product training might count for state CE requirements
While annuities, flood, and long-term care insurance are three lines of business that states and carriers both specifically mandate further training on, carriers offer even more product training that may fulfill a state’s general CE requirements. This can come in handy for insurance agents who want to kill two birds with one stone. Insurance carriers also know that producers will more willingly sit through their mandatory product training if they can count it toward a CE requirement they have anyway.
You can’t spell compliance without CE
Both literally and figuratively, CE is a vital part of insurance producer license compliance, and there’s no sign that it’s going to get less complicated anytime soon. If managing compliance for multiple producers, agents, or broker-dealers across different states, different lines of business, and different license types (even securities!) is costing you more time and money than you’d like, see how AgentSync can help streamline and automate the entire producer lifecycle.