What the Florida 2-20 License Covers
The 2-20 General Lines license is Florida's full property and casualty credential, and its statutory scope is broader than the P&C label suggests: property, casualty, surety, marine, health and miscellaneous lines. Florida does not issue separate resident "property only" or "casualty only" agent licenses the way many states do — the narrower option is the 20-44 Personal Lines license, and it is genuinely narrower rather than a partial version of this one.
It is issued by the Department of Financial Services (DFS), the licensing division under Florida's elected Chief Financial Officer. Florida has no Department of Insurance. Insurer solvency, rate filings and policy forms belong to the separate Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR), whose Commissioner is appointed by the Financial Services Commission — the Governor and Cabinet. Elected CFO over people; appointed Commissioner over companies. The exam tests that split reliably, and it is not a distinction most states have to make.
The 200-hour course is the headline, and it has an escape hatch. The standard 2-20 prelicensing requirement is a 200-hour DFS-approved course completed or taught within four years. But someone who has held a 4-40 Customer Representative, 20-44 Personal Lines or 0-55 Service Representative license for one of the last four years qualifies on 40 hours instead. There is also a pure experience route — one year in the last four of responsible insurance duties as a full-time bona fide employee across all lines — and a CPCU or an insurance degree with 18 semester hours waives the examination entirely under F.S. § 626.221(2)(h) and (i).
For the prelicensing coursework, TESTivity recommends Achievable. The Achievable insurance courses were built by the same subject-matter expert behind TESTivity, so the two are designed to work together.
One important distinction: TESTivity is not an approved pre-licensing provider in Florida and does not issue certificates of completion. The TESTivity learning tools and study packages will absolutely help you pass the exam — but treat them as a supplement to your Achievable course, not a substitute for it.
Disclosure: TESTivity has a partnership with Achievable and may earn a commission if you enroll through links on this page.
Exam Options & Format
The general lines exam is InsFL-PC06 through Pearson VUE (client code FLINS): 160 scored questions plus 15 unscored pretest items — 175 on screen — in 3 hours, at $44, passing at 70%. It is the longest producer exam Florida administers, and the only one that runs a full three hours.
The 20-44 Personal Lines exam (InsFL-Pers55) is the alternative if your book will be homeowners and personal auto: 100 scored plus 8 pretest questions in 2 hours, at the same fee, off a 60-hour course rather than 200. The Personal Lines guide covers it.
If surplus lines is in your future, note that 1-20 Surplus Lines is a separate license with its own short exam — InsFL-Surplus82, 40 scored plus 10 pretest questions in 1 hour — and under F.S. § 626.914 et seq. it sits on top of an active 2-20. You cannot go straight to surplus lines.
Test centers only; DFS discontinued OnVUE for Florida insurance candidates. The Health guide covers centers and scheduling, the Life & Health guide covers exam-day rules, and the Personal Lines guide covers results, retakes and the five-attempt cap.
Most Tested Topics on the Florida General Lines Exam
No state's P&C exam is as dominated by catastrophe-market law as Florida's. The residual market, the state reinsurance fund, percentage hurricane deductibles and the guaranty association carry more weight here than almost any national topic — and the regulatory-structure questions are free marks if you know the split. Each row is verified against the statute:
| Concept | The Florida rule |
|---|---|
| Insurer of last resort | Citizens Property Insurance Corporation — Florida has no traditional FAIR Plan (F.S. § 627.351(6)) |
| Coastal wind | Citizens' Coastal Account, which absorbed the former windstorm pool, backed by the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (FHCF), a state reinsurance fund (F.S. § 215.555) |
| Hurricane deductibles | Policies must offer deductibles of $500, 2%, 5% or 10% (F.S. § 627.701) |
| Sinkhole vs. ground collapse | Catastrophic ground cover collapse is mandatory coverage; sinkhole loss is an optional endorsement (F.S. § 627.706) |
| Rate regulation | File-and-use (filed at least 90 days before use) or use-and-file (filed within 30 days after use); rates may not be excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory (F.S. § 627.062(2)) |
| Credit scoring | Permitted but restricted — an insurer may not take adverse action based solely on credit in personal auto or residential property (F.S. § 626.9741) |
| Surplus lines prerequisite | An active 2-20 plus a separate 1-20 surplus lines license (F.S. § 626.914 et seq.) |
| Diligent effort | Required — declinations from admitted insurers before placing surplus lines business (F.S. § 626.916) |
| P&C guaranty association | Florida Insurance Guaranty Association (FIGA) — covered claims to $300,000, plus an additional $200,000 for the structure and contents portion of a homeowners claim; workers' compensation claims paid in full (F.S. § 631.57) |
| Workers' comp threshold | 4 or more employees generally; 1 or more in construction; 6 regular or 12 seasonal in agriculture (F.S. § 440.02(17)) |
| Workers' comp benefits | TTD at 66⅔% of the average weekly wage, capped at the statewide average, limited to 104 weeks (F.S. § 440.15(2)) |
| Workers' comp deadlines | Report to the employer within 30 days; petition for benefits within 2 years (F.S. §§ 440.185, 440.19) |
| Regulator split | DFS licenses producers under the elected CFO; OIR regulates insurers under a Commissioner appointed by the Financial Services Commission (F.S. § 20.121) |
| Where the law lives | The Florida Insurance Code — statutes chapters 624–632, 634, 635, 636, 641, 642, 648 and 651 — with rules in F.A.C. Title 69O (OIR) and Title 69B (DFS) (F.S. § 624.01) |
The property cluster is where Florida earns its reputation, and the sharpest distinction is catastrophic ground cover collapse versus sinkhole loss. They sound like the same peril and they are not: ground cover collapse is mandatory in a residential property policy, sinkhole loss is an optional endorsement the insurer must make available. A question that hands you a homeowner with foundation damage is usually asking which of the two applies, and the answer turns on the statutory definition of collapse, not on the presence of a hole.
The workers' compensation thresholds are the other reliable set, and the reason they get missed is that most states publish a single number. Florida publishes three, indexed on industry: four employees generally, one in construction, six regular or twelve seasonal in agriculture. Construction being a threshold of one is the fact worth locking down — it is the one most often answered wrong, and it is the one with the most practical consequence in a state that builds as much as this one does.
Bringing a License to Florida — Reciprocity, Waivers and the 90-Day Cliff
Florida is friendly to experienced producers from other states, but it enforces its deadlines literally. There are three distinct situations and they carry different consequences, so identify which one you are in before you file anything.
Situation one — you live elsewhere and want to write Florida business. You apply for a nonresident license: 9-20 for general lines, 90-44 personal lines, 8-15/8-14/8-40 on the life and health side, 91-20 surplus lines. Under F.S. § 626.741 Florida may license a person who is "licensed in his or her home state as a resident agent" and otherwise qualifies, and may waive the written examination by reciprocal arrangement where the home state extends the same privilege to Florida residents. F.S. § 626.221(2)(o) independently exempts a nonresident applicant holding "a comparable license in another state with similar examination requirements."
The condition that persists. A nonresident must hold and maintain the home-state resident license for the entire time the Florida license is in force. Let the home-state license lapse and the Florida nonresident license goes with it — this is not a one-time qualification, it is a continuing one.
Situation two — you are moving to Florida. This is the 90-day cliff, and it is the most valuable fact on this page. A person who held the equivalent resident license in another state for at least one continuous year and applies for the Florida resident license within 90 days of establishing residency gets both prelicensing and the examination waived. For a 2-20 applicant that is 200 hours and a three-hour exam avoided by filing on time.
Miss it and you drop a tier. Apply after 90 days and you fall back to the "valid equivalent license in a reciprocal state within the prior 4 years" path — where prelicensing is waived but the examination is required. The 200 hours are still gone, but InsFL-PC06 is back on your calendar.
And there is a harder version of the same deadline. F.S. § 626.741 gives a nonresident who becomes a Florida resident "a period not to exceed 90 days" to keep operating under the nonresident license while the resident application is pending. Failure to obtain the resident license within 90 days results in automatic cancellation of the nonresident license. So the 90 days is not only about avoiding coursework — past it, you may find yourself unlicensed rather than merely inconvenienced.
Situation three — you are qualified by credential rather than by another license. CPCU waives the examination for a general lines, personal lines or all-lines adjuster applicant under § 626.221(2)(h), and an insurance degree with at least 18 credit hours covering property, casualty, health and commercial insurance does the same under (2)(i). Both carry the statute's standard rider: the department may still test you on the provisions of the Florida Insurance Code. CIC does not waive the 2-20 exam — it is a 4-40 Customer Representative qualification route under § 626.7351, and conflating the two is one of the most common Florida errors online. The Life guide sets out the full waiver map.
Temporary licenses, for completeness. Under F.S. § 626.175 — not § 626.291, which is the passing-grade section — Florida issues the T2-20 temporary general lines license for six months to an employee, family member, business associate or personal representative of an agent who has died or become unable to work through military service, illness or disability, where nobody else connected with the business holds a general lines license. Exam and education are waived; fingerprinting is not. It is not renewable, and no second temporary license may be issued to anyone else at that agency. The parallel T2-14 life temporary license carries an even stricter limit: one per lifetime.
Everything routes through MyProfile or NIPR. Resident applications go through MyProfile; nonresident filings and verifications commonly go through NIPR. Either way you will need Letters of Certification or Clearance from your home state, which MyProfile can also generate for Florida licensees leaving in the other direction.
Florida Doesn't Renew Licenses — It Renews Appointments
This is the single biggest structural difference between Florida and almost every other state, and nearly every third-party page gets it wrong. Florida agent and adjuster licenses are perpetual. DFS's FAQ says it in as many words: insurance agent and adjuster licenses are "perpetual (no renewal required), provided that the licensee is properly appointed. The license will expire if it goes 48 months without an appointment." Every DFS per-license qualification sheet repeats the same sentence.
So there is no license renewal, no renewal application, and no renewal fee. If a page quotes you a Florida producer license renewal fee, it is describing a state that is not this one. What does run on a cycle — and what people mistake for renewal — are two other things: your appointment and your CE.
The appointment cycle: 24 months, keyed to your birth month. Under F.S. § 626.381, appointments renew "every 24 months thereafter," and the expiration month for a natural person is the appointee's birth month. (For an entity it is the month the original appointment was issued — a different rule, and a favourite exam distinction.) On-time renewals "may be renewed by the department without penalty" and take effect the first day of the month following expiration.
The appointing entity does the work — and pays. The insurer or agency files the renewal lists and pays the fees by the DFS deadline following the expiration month. The fee is $60 for most producer appointments, itemized in F.S. § 624.501 as a $42 appointment fee + $12 state tax + $6 county tax. Surplus lines appointments are $150; bail bond and surety $80; a military registration for life is $20.
A consumer-protection line worth quoting. § 626.381 provides that "late filing fees shall be paid by the appointing entity and may not be charged to the appointee." If an agency deducts a late appointment filing fee from your commissions, the statute is against them. The same section also bars an appointing entity from conditioning appointment renewal on attendance at continuing education courses — it may require its own product training, but it cannot make your CE its lever.
Late is survivable; 48 months is not. Late filings may be accepted with a late filing, continuation or reinstatement fee, so a missed month is a fee problem rather than a career problem. The number that ends a license is the 48 months with no appointment at all. Which is why the practical advice for a producer between carriers is to keep at least one appointment live rather than letting them all drop.
How CE ties in — and how it eventually kills a license. Florida does not suspend your license for missing CE. It does something slower: under F.A.C. 69B-228.220 the Department "shall refuse to renew or continue the appointments or issue new appointments" for a licensee who misses the compliance date, alongside a $250 continuing education fine. Block the appointments long enough and the 48-month rule finishes the job. Enforcement applies to compliance cycles ending 1 February 2022 or later.
The CE cycle itself. 24 hours every two years, due by the last day of your birth month — first after 24 months licensed, then every two years — with the mandatory 4-hour Law & Ethics Update coded 5-220 for a 2-20 agent. The Life & Health guide covers the tenure reductions and the DFS-H2-1109 form the 25-year reduction requires; the reductions apply to the elective hours only.
Keep MyProfile current. Your address of record, your appointments, your CE transcript and your pending-application deficiencies all live there, and DFS treats it as the channel of record. A producer who moves and does not update MyProfile is the classic way an appointment lapse goes unnoticed until the license is in trouble.
What It Costs
The one-time cost of a 2-20 is ordinary: $44 per attempt to Pearson VUE, $55 to DFS at application ($50 filing plus the $5 license ID fee), and $49.50 to IdentoGO for LiveScan fingerprints plus Florida county sales tax — about $149 on a first-attempt pass. The extraordinary cost is the 200-hour course, which dwarfs everything else on this page and is the real reason people take the 20-44 route or qualify on experience.
The recurring cost is not what you would expect. There is no license renewal fee. The $60 biennial appointment ($42 + $12 state tax + $6 county tax) is the appointing entity's obligation, and the statute forbids it from passing late filing fees to you. Surplus lines appointments run $150, bail bond and surety $80. Your own recurring spend is CE — 24 hours every two years — plus the $250 fine if you miss the deadline.
One exemption worth knowing: members of the armed forces, their spouses, and veterans separated within the previous 24 months are exempt from the application filing fee with supporting documentation under F.S. § 626.171.
Eligibility Requirements
A resident 2-20 applicant must be a natural person at least 18, a U.S. citizen or legal alien with work authorization, and a bona fide Florida resident; nonresidents file the 9-20. Fingerprints must reach DFS before it may approve the application (F.S. § 626.171) — the Personal Lines guide walks the IdentoGO process — and the conduct grounds in F.S. §§ 626.611 and 626.621 apply for the life of the license.
DFS lists the 2-20 as incompatible with the 0-55, 0-93, 4-30, 4-40 and 4-42 classes. That matters most to people qualifying through one of those licenses: the 4-40 or 20-44 you used to earn the 40-hour reduced course path is not something you keep alongside the 2-20.
Qualification paths, in DFS's own order: the 200-hour course; one year in the last four of responsible insurance duties as a full-time bona fide employee across property, casualty, surety, health and marine; or one year in the last four holding a 4-40, 20-44 or 0-55 plus a 40-hour approved course. The exam is required on all three. It is waived only by an insurance degree with 18 semester hours, a CPCU, or the 90-day new-resident transfer covered above.
Continuing Education for a 2-20
Important CE details: The 2-20 mandatory update is the general lines Law & Ethics course coded 5-220; reductions apply to the 20 elective hours only, never to the update.
24 hours every two years — a 4-hour Law & Ethics Update coded 5-220 plus 20 elective hours — completed by the last day of your birth month, first after 24 months licensed and every two years after that (F.A.C. 69B-228.220). The update must be specific to the license held, so a general lines agent who also holds a life license owes two different update courses, not one.
The statutory reductions cut the elective hours only. Six or more years licensed reduces them; 25 or more years with a CLU or CPCU, or a risk management or insurance degree carrying at least 18 semester hours, reduces them further — but that one is not automatic and requires form DFS-H2-1109 filed before your birth month in the compliance year. Note the neat consequence for a 2-20 agent: the CPCU that can waive your licensing exam is also the designation that unlocks the 25-year CE reduction later.
Providers report completions to DFS within 21 days, so finish early enough that the credit posts before your birth month ends. Missing the date means the $250 fine and the appointment block described in the renewal section above — which is the mechanism that actually threatens the license.
Quick Reference
Official Links
Don't study generic. Study Florida.
You've got the roadmap. Now get the Florida-specific P&C question bank, mock exams, and video course built by instructors with 20+ years teaching this material.