Mich. Offers New On-line Payment Option for Agents’ Licenses

Individuals wishing to become licensed as insurance agents in Michigan may now pay online for their license, Office of Financial and Insurance Services (OFIS) Commissioner Linda A. Watters announced.

The online payment service is the first to be offered by OFIS, Watters said. The service adds to the 170 online services currently available on the state of Michigan’s portal. www.michigan.gov, making more state government services available anytime from anywhere.

Form FIS 0225, the Michigan Application for Individual Producer Insurance License, is an online application that has been available since 2003. However, the option to pay online along with the application was not available until now.

“Offering the option to make online payments is part of our ongoing effort to streamline the insurance license application process,” Watters said. “I hope all insurance producer license applicants will take advantage of this service.”

According to Watters, of the 25,680 applications received in 2005, only 4,229 were received online due to the inability to submit payment along with the application. Michigan has a total of 140,536 licensed individual insurance producers.

The acceptance of electronic payments will result in significant savings to the state because as many as 20,000 applications will no longer be manually processed. It also will eliminate return of applications for non-sufficient payment and clerical errors such as omitted and inconsistent information.

Currently, OFIS only offers online applications for Individual Producer Insurance Licenses, but anticipates that applications for all other licenses will be online by the end of 2007.

Individuals wishing to apply for the Individual Producer Insurance License online may visit https://mi-mall.michigan.gov/ofis/.

Source: Michigan Office of Financial and Insurance Services