Medicare Agent Licensing
Once you’ve decided Medicare sales is right for you, you need to get licensed in the states where you want to sell. Each state will have its own requirements, but most require a high school diploma, pre-licensing education, an insurance license application, fingerprinting, and a background check.
Insurance licenses have different lines of authority, allowing you to sell different types of insurance. For Medicare sales, most agents have Life & Health lines of authority, but be sure to research which lines of authority are required to sell Medicare products in all states where you wish to conduct business.
Once you’ve decided the lines of authority you need, you need to find out what your state requires for pre-licensing education. Many states require around 20 hours of education per line of authority, but each state is slightly different. We recommend using Kaplan Financial. You can search licensing requirements, sign up for in-person or virtual classes, and review study materials for all 50 states in one place. We have a discount code (“NCC”) that will give you 15% off any pre-licensing or continuing education purchases you make.
After you finish your pre-licensing work, you can schedule and take your licensing exam. Once you’ve passed the exam, you can apply for a license, get fingerprinted, and go through a background check, depending on state requirements. Within a few weeks of passing your exam, you should be ready to go ahead and move on to contracting.
Continuing Education
To maintain your insurance license, you’ll need to complete a certain number of approved Continuing Education (CE) credit hours, typically every two years. Many states require 24 CE credit hours, with at least three being ethics training. Again, we recommend Kaplan (use code “NCC” for a 15% discount). You can search and sign up for continuing education classes in all 50 states from their site. We highly recommend taking continuing education courses regularly and not waiting till the 2-year deadline.
Medicare Agent Contracting
Different products and carriers have different contracting requirements. Below you will see a breakdown of contracting needs, including certifications, by product and carrier.
Basics for Starting the Contracting Process
- Health and Life Insurance license(s) for any state in which you intend to sell products.
- Errors and Omissions (E&O) coverage – NAPA is a good carrier to get a basic policy with https://www.napa-benefits.org/errors-and-omissions.
- Voided Check.
- Username and Password to any website through which you have taken a certification.
- i.e., Limra if you have taken AML.
- Explanations of anything that may be on your background, i.e., Bankruptcies, Arrests, Complaints, etc. The explanations need to be as specific as possible with dates and any supporting document that you may have. We suggest that every explanation covers these basic points:
- What happened, the county in which it occurred,
- Why it happened, the outcome, and
- Why the issue will not happen again.
Once you have all the basics together, it is time to start the process. When contracting with NCC, there are two main ways contracts can be submitted: A link for contracting, which is sent to your email address or through our online contracting platform SureLC.
- Online contracting – allows you to enter your information once to request multiple carrier contracts without retyping it repeatedly. There are minimum additional carrier-specific questions when requesting contracts, and SureLC allows you to upload your signature to be affixed to each contract.
- Carrier-specific links – are required by the carrier to shorten their back-end processing. Some carrier-specific contracts will allow you to roll right into their certification process.
Medicare Agent Certifications
After completing all necessary information and submitting the contracts, you move into the approval and certification phase. If you choose to focus on selling Medicare Supplements and ancillary products, certifications are not required (UHC does require certifications to sell their Medicare Supplements). Medicare Advantage and Prescription Drug Plans do, however, require certifications.
Completing carrier certifications starts with passing AHIP. There are five modules to AHIP, with quizzes throughout and a final exam. You must pass the final exam within three attempts by obtaining 90% or better. Each year the new AHIP exam releases at the end of June (release dates vary by year) and covers the remainder of the current calendar year and the next full year. AHIP costs $175, but by linking to AHIP through a carrier, you will receive a $50 discount.
Carriers provide links within their certification modules, or you can click here to visit AHIP directly and still receive the $50 discount.
Once you have completed AHIP, you will move on to the carrier-specific product modules. As with AHIP, there are modules to review (difficulty and time investment varies by carrier) and then testing. Most carriers require the test be passed within three attempts. UnitedHealthcare, however, allows for six attempts. After passing the carrier-specific product modules, you will then receive ready-to-sell notices with your carrier-specific writing numbers.
Please Note:
- You MAY NOT sell a Medicare Advantage or Prescription Drug Plan without having received a ready-to-sell notice from the carrier you are representing for the current contract year.
- Yearly Recertifications (AHIP and Carrier Specific) are required to continue to sell and/or receive renewal payments.
