Compliance Updates

California:

Changes to the insurance adjuster licensing will become effective on January 1, 2011. Included among the provisions of the bill was to set the ethics training requirement for both independent and public insurance adjusters at three hours each two-year license term and to stagger the renewal dates for new applicants. Current law specifies that both independent and public insurance adjusters must complete a minimum of 24 hours, including ethics, of continuing education (CE) courses pertinent to the duties and responsibilities of their insurance adjuster license every two years prior to renewing their license. However, current law does not specify the number of hours of training on ethics that should be completed. AB 2782 amends the California Insurance Code to specify that 3 of the required 24 hours of CE must be on ethics.

North Carolina:

For the 2011-2012 annual company appointment renewal billing, the North Carolina Department of Insurance will process appointment renewals for Producer (all six major line of authority licenses), Auto Physical Damage, Medicare Supplement/Long Term Care, Limited Representative, Title Insurance, Credit Agent, and County Farm Mutual Agent electronically through the National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR). In past years, the Agent Services Division has exempted some companies from the electronic processing requirements. For the 2011-2012 annual company appointment renewal billing, electronic processing through NIPR is mandatory for ALL insurance companies.

Ohio:

Pearson VUE will introduce the new general product knowledge pre-licensing content outlines for the State of Ohio effective January 1, 2011. These new outlines will be available online in the near future at www.pearsonvue.com. Individuals preparing for an insurance licensing exam that will be administered on or after the announced effective date are urged to ensure that their study materials reflect the most recent curriculum revisions.

Connecticut:

The State of Connecticut Insurance Department has announced that licensees will now have the ability to print their own licenses free of charge. The DOI will no longer mail hard copies of licenses, effective December 1, 2010. The Print –A-License option may be found under “Verify a License” on the CT DOI website at http://www.catalog.state.ct.us/cid/CLIC/VerifyLicense.aspx

Florida:

Effective December 15, 2010, the Florida Department of Financial Services, Division of Agent and Agency Services, will no longer accept VISA-branded credit or debit cards. VISA’s regulations prevent a pass through of their processing fees to a government entity’s customers, and budget limitations prevent the FDFS from absorbing those costs. As a result, FDFS will no longer accept VISA-branded cards. MasterCard, Discover Card, American Express, and eCheck will continue to be accepted.

Oregon:

The Oregon Insurance Division recently filed rules addressing changes in the process for applying for insurance license with the Secretary of State.  These rules propose to restructure the order in which a person applies for a license to eliminate a pre-approval process that is currently conducted before other steps in the licensing process, such as examinations and background checks. Under the reorganized process, the pre-approval requirement would be deleted entirely.  The applicant would complete all other steps in the licensing process before submitting the application to the Insurance Division. To clarify the process, a new rule is proposed that states the order of the process for applying for a license.