Last reviewed: 15 September 2026
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How to check if a Canadian insurance agent or broker is licensed
Unlike the US, where NIPR's multistate database gives you one starting point regardless of which state issued the license (see our US guide), Canada requires knowing the specific province or territory first — see our companion explainer on how Canada's provincial regulators are structured for why. Once you know the province, though, every one of them publishes a real, free, public lookup. Here's each one.
Step 1: get the province and the exact legal name
Ask directly which province or territory issued the license, and for the person's full legal name — a license is issued to a specific name in a specific jurisdiction, the same as in the US. If someone sells insurance in more than one province, they generally need a separate, active license in each one they actually operate in, so ask which province applies to the transaction you're actually doing, not just where the person happens to live.
Step 2: use that province's own lookup tool
- Ontario (agents): FSRA's licensed insurance agents listing, for life/accident & sickness and single-insurer general agents.
- Ontario (brokers): RIBO's broker search, for multi-insurer P&C brokers — a different regulator from the agent search above, so check both if you're not sure which the person is.
- British Columbia: Insurance Council of BC's licensee directory.
- Alberta: Alberta Insurance Council's Agent Lookup.
- Saskatchewan: Insurance Councils of Saskatchewan's licensee search.
- Manitoba: Insurance Council of Manitoba's agent and agency search.
- Quebec: the AMF's Register of firms and individuals authorized to practice — the actual licensing record, separate from the Chambre de l'assurance's own disciplinary-decision publications (see our regulatory-structure explainer for why Quebec splits these).
- New Brunswick: contact the Financial and Consumer Services Commission directly for licensing verification.
- Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island: each province's own Office of the Superintendent of Insurance handles license verification requests.
- Newfoundland and Labrador: the Office of the Superintendent of Insurance, administered through Service NL.
- Yukon: Yukon's own online insurance company and professional register.
- Northwest Territories: the territorial Office of the Superintendent of Insurance.
- Nunavut: the territorial insurance licensing office.
Each of these is free and doesn't require the producer's consent to search, the same as a US state DOI lookup — you generally just need a name.
Step 3: check discipline separately, through CIRDA
A current-license search tells you licensing status, not disciplinary history. For that, search the Canadian Insurance Regulators Disciplinary Actions (CIRDA) database — one shared search across most provincial councils' published decisions since 2008, rather than checking each province's own disciplinary page one at a time. It's a real, useful shortcut precisely because it's the one part of this system that actually is aggregated nationally (see our structural overview for why licensing itself isn't).
What a clean result does and doesn't tell you
An active Canadian provincial license confirms the person is currently authorized to sell insurance in that specific province — nothing more. It doesn't confirm they're appointed to sell a specific carrier's products (a separate, carrier-filed fact in Canada much as in the US — see our appointment explainer for the US version of that same distinction), and it says nothing about the financial strength of any carrier involved (a separate question for ratings agencies like AM Best or DBRS Morningstar, not an insurance regulator). And a license from any Canadian province is a wholly separate thing from a US state producer license — the two countries' licensing systems don't recognize each other's credentials, so a producer licensed in Ontario has no automatic authorization to sell in Michigan, or vice versa.
If you're checking whether a license held in one Canadian province lets someone sell in another, see our companion page on reciprocity between provinces — the honest answer is more nuanced than a flat yes or no.