SEATTLE–Race, education and personal accountability are some of the topics that came up here during a session on producer licensing.
A working group on Producer Licensing Testing and Examination held a public hearing Tuesday here at the summer meeting of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), Kansas City, Mo.
Bill Anderson, a senior vice president at the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, Falls Church, Va., and Thomas Harris, a senior vice president at The Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company, Horsham, Pa., talked about the need to meet the growing demand for licensed agents in their industry.
Witnesses reported that examination passing rates vary widely from state to state.
Producers are much more likely to pass in some states, such as Illinois, than in other states, Harris said.
"An agent's chance of getting a license depends more on where they live than what they know," Harris said.
Test takers who are members of minority groups under-represented in the agency work force tend to have a low producer test passing rate, Harris said.
