What a "line of authority" actually is

Our guide on checking if your agent is licensed mentions in passing that a license lookup typically shows "the license type (e.g., life, property & casualty, or both)" alongside an active or inactive status. This page is about that line-by-line structure itself: what a "line of authority" (LOA) legally is, the major and limited lines a producer can actually hold, and why an active result for one line doesn't mean a producer is authorized to sell everything else.

A license is issued per line, not as one all-purpose credential

Under the NAIC's Producer Licensing Model Act (Model #218) and its Uniform Licensing Standards, a producer applies for, and is separately authorized on, specific lines of authority — the license record itself lists which ones a given person actually holds. A state can grant, suspend, or revoke authority for a single line without touching the others on the same underlying license, which is exactly why a lookup result of "active" is only half the answer to "can this person sell me this."

The major lines

NAIC's Uniform Licensing Standards direct states to recognize a common set of major lines of authority: Life; Accident and Health or Sickness; Property; Casualty; Personal Lines (property and casualty coverage sold to individuals and families, distinct from commercial-lines authority); and Variable Life and Variable Annuity Products, which — as our companion explainer covers — also requires a separate federal securities registration on top of this state insurance line. A property & casualty producer can hold broad commercial Property and/or Casualty authority, narrower Personal Lines-only authority, or both — a personal-lines-only producer generally isn't authorized to write commercial coverage even though both fall under the same general "P&C" description in everyday conversation.

Limited lines: narrower, product-specific authority

Beyond the major lines, states also license a shorter, capped set of "limited lines" — narrower, product-specific authorities. NAIC's Uniform Licensing Standards cap how many separate limited lines a single state may offer to no more than nine, and identify a "core" set every adopting state licenses the same way: travel, credit-related coverage (including the debt-cancellation and GAP-adjacent products our GAP insurance explainer covers), rental car insurance, and crop insurance. States fill the rest of their nine-line cap with their own choices — self-service storage, portable electronics, surety, and pre-need funeral coverage are documented examples. Some specialty roles covered elsewhere in this Library — surplus lines and life settlement brokering among them — are handled as their own, entirely separate license categories rather than as a limited line under this specific major/limited-line framework; this page covers the standard system those roles sit alongside, not on top of.

Why this matters when you're checking someone

A lookup showing "active" for a Life line doesn't tell you whether that same person also holds Casualty authority — so a property & casualty pitch from someone you only confirmed holds a Life license is a real, checkable gap, not something the word "active" alone rules out. Point 1 of our published standard checks that a license is verified as "covering every state actually sold in"; by the same logic, a genuine check also confirms the specific line actually being sold, since an active license for the wrong line leaves you in functionally the same position as an inactive one for the coverage actually in question.

What to actually check

When you run a state DOI lookup using our licensing guide, read the specific line or lines listed next to "active," not just the status word by itself. And if you're being sold a specialty product covered by its own companion explainer in this Library — GAP, flood, a variable annuity, a life settlement, surplus lines coverage — check that page's own license-type guidance too, rather than assuming a general "producer license" search alone confirms the specific authority that product actually requires.