States Announce Earth-Shattering Win! All 50 States Agree to Universally Adopt Standard Insurance Regulations

If you’ve been following our blog for the past year-or-so, you’re no stranger to the oft-repeated advice to check with your state for all applicable insurance regulations. 

No one is more surprised than us to learn, however, that as of April 1, 2022, a National Insurance Cohort of Commissioners has announced a forthcoming agreement between all 50 U.S. states to once and for all get on the same page regarding their insurance laws. 

The good news 

If you’ve ever struggled with managing producer licensing and compliance, continuing education, renewals, or carrier appointments across multiple states, then this is great news for you. A uniform set of insurance regulations will simplify your life. 

Just think, no more:

• State-by-state appointments
• Confusion over which are surplus or standard lines of insurance
• Different rates across states
• DBA confusion and conflicts
• Affiliations variations between general producer and DRLP requirements

The not-so-good news

Before you get too excited, we should tell you that as part of this universal agreement, the states decided to pull elements from a variety of state-specific regulations. Some confusion on the part of other states is expected to occur as all 50 begin to adopt the new universal rules. 

Here’s just a sampling of what you can expect to see in the forthcoming standardized regulations:

• Following Florida’s regulatory precedent, all insurance appointments must be made for each county a producer may operate in.
• Regarding Just-In-Time appointments, states are combining rules in a complex hierarchy of dates that allow you to hold off longer on appointments for producers based on even years of birth or demand earlier appointments for those with both odd years of birth and odd birthday dates.
• Similarly, license renewal dates will now be based on Hawaiian law, meaning those born in odd months will renew biennially in odd years on the 16th of their birth months.
• Inspired by California, producers must now also include their national producer number (NPN) in all communications, personal and professional.
• To pay homage to the sizable number of states whose insurance departments are also in charge of fire-related regulation, all producers will need CE training to help them double as emergency volunteer firefighters

“The fire requirement concerns me a little,” said Jim Khan, CA license No. 2918566536, CO license No. 22166542, MN license No. 778523, LA license No. 556372824929, MI license No. 281-99X, KS license No. 32991253, SC license No. 71971011092756649242, MO license No. 16592-444. “And, I used to think being licensed across a lot of states was advantageous, but even texting my family has gotten ridiculous with all these numbers!”

The even better news 

Fifty states agreeing on universal insurance regulations, including some of the most cumbersome parts of each state’s own laws? If all this sounds a little too wacky to be real, then you got us! Or, maybe we got you. April Fools! Nope, no one is adopting a universal U.S. standard of insurance regulations. And those state-specific pieces we mentioned still only apply to the states that made them. 

But, if you got really excited – even just for a moment – at the thought of not having to keep track of insurance producer licensing and compliance across 50 different states and even more U.S. territories, then you should check out AgentSync. 
No joke: AgentSync Manage can do the heavy lifting and dramatically simplify producer onboarding, licensing, carrier appointments, tracking continuing ed, renewals, and more across all states and territories. In real time. With a two-way NIPR sync. Check out how with our two-minute overview.