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Insurance Agent Resume 2026 - lines of authority, book of business and retention sample free

Антон Литвинов
Антон Литвинов Founder, AI Resume Master
in 𝕏
Published: 25.09.2026 Updated: 25.09.2026

Insurance hiring starts with a licence check. Agents are licensed by each state and the licence is issued by line of authority, so property, casualty, life, and accident and health are separate permissions rather than one general credential. An agency looking at your resume needs to know which lines you hold, which states you are appointed in, and whether you have ever sold variable products, which requires securities registration on top of the insurance licence. After that the conversation is about your book: how many policies and households you manage, what your retention looks like at renewal, and how many lines the average client holds. Retention is the number that quietly decides everything, because a producer who writes plenty and keeps nothing is expensive to employ.

What you get

  • A complete insurance agent resume sample
  • 3 PDF templates
  • A formula for writing a book of business and retention in numbers
  • 6 mistakes that cost interviews at agencies and carriers
Create resume → 5 minutes - AI suggestions - ATS friendly
Ready sample

Insurance agent resume sample

The structure an agency principal and a carrier recruiter both read: licence and lines first, book size and retention next, then carrier appointments, systems and designations.

Lines of authority spelled out

Property, casualty, life, accident and health, personal lines - written as your state issues them, with the states you are licensed in. This is the first filter and it is binary.

Book of business in real units

Policies in force, households or accounts managed, new policies written per month, and the mix between personal and commercial lines. Units are safer and clearer than premium figures.

Retention, not just production

Renewal retention rate and policies per household are what separate a producer who builds a book from one who churns through one. Put both near the top.

ATS friendly

Carriers and large brokerages screen through applicant tracking systems, and carrier names, line abbreviations and designations are exactly what they search for. Single column, standard headings, no photo, no tables.

Sample resume text

Use it as a reference: keep the structure and wording, put in your own facts and numbers.

Terrence Boyle

Licensed Insurance Producer, Property and Casualty, Life and Health
Columbus, OH
terrence.producer@example.com
(614) 555-0164
linkedin.com/in/example

Profile

Licensed Insurance Producer with 8 years in personal and small commercial lines, Columbus OH. Property and Casualty plus Life and Health, resident Ohio with nonresident licences in Kentucky and Indiana. Five years independent across 11 carrier appointments. Manage 1,240 policies across 610 households at 93% renewal retention and 2.04 policies per household. Certified Insurance Counselor, three CPCU courses completed.

Experience

Producer2021 - present

Keldon Rowe Insurance Agency (independent), Columbus, OH

  • Built and service a book of 1,240 policies across 610 households, writing an average of 31 new policies a month across 11 appointed carriers
  • Raised renewal retention from 87% to 93% over three years by running a scheduled annual review call on every household 60 days before renewal
  • Lifted policies per household from 1.6 to 2.04 by adding umbrella and life quotes to every personal lines review, adding 214 policies without new lead spend
  • Remarketed 96 households through a hard-market rate cycle, keeping 81 of them with the agency rather than losing them to a direct writer
  • Completed three CPCU courses and earned the CIC designation while carrying a full book
Insurance Agent2018 - 2021

Halverson Mutual Insurance (captive agency office), Columbus, OH

  • Wrote personal auto, home and life for a single carrier, averaging 26 new policies a month against an office target of 20
  • Converted 34% of carrier-supplied internet leads to a quote and 11% to a bound policy, the highest of five agents in the office
  • Added Life and Health lines of authority in 2019 and produced life applications on 1 in 5 new auto households
Customer Service Representative, Personal Lines2017 - 2018

Brightmoor Regional Insurance Services, Dayton, OH

  • Handled 55 to 70 service calls a day covering endorsements, billing, certificates and claim intake
  • Earned the Property and Casualty licence during this role and moved into production the following year

Education

University of Cincinnati2013 - 2017

BS, Business Administration

Skills

Personal lines: auto, home, umbrellaSmall commercial: BOP, general liability, workers compensationLife, disability income and Medicare supplementMulti-carrier quoting and comparative ratingApplied Epic and EZLynxUnderwriting submissions and loss run reviewEndorsements, certificates and bindersRenewal review and remarketingFirst notice of loss and claims supportAnnual coverage reviews and cross-selling

Licences and Designations

  • Ohio Property and Casualty Licence - 2017
  • Ohio Life and Health Licence - 2019
  • Nonresident licences: Kentucky, Indiana
  • Certified Insurance Counselor (CIC) - 2023
  • CPCU programme: 3 of the required courses completed

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Profile

Insurance agent profile summary

Four lines: years licensed, the lines of authority and states you hold, whether you have worked captive or independent, and the size and retention of the book you manage. An agency owner is deciding whether you can service what you sell, and a carrier recruiter is deciding whether you can sell at all.

New producers should write the same paragraph from the licence and transferable sales record. Insurance is one of the few fields where a carrier will train you from scratch, but they still hire on evidence of discipline: call volume, quota history, and the ability to keep working a list after the easy names are gone.

WeakLicensed insurance agent with excellent customer service skills and a passion for helping families protect what matters most. Great communicator seeking a rewarding position with a stable company.
StrongLicensed Insurance Producer, Property and Casualty plus Life and Health, resident Ohio with nonresident licences in Kentucky and Indiana. 8 years, five of them independent across 11 carrier appointments. Manage a book of 1,240 policies across 610 households at 93% renewal retention and 2.04 policies per household. CIC designation, working toward CPCU.
Tip
Write the lines of authority the way your state issues them rather than using a shorthand. Agencies search for the exact terms, and a vague 'fully licensed' line matches nothing.
Skills

Insurance agent skills for a resume

Risk assessment, quoting, placement and the servicing work that keeps a renewal on the books. Name the agency management system you actually work in, because agencies filter on it.

Hard skills

  • Personal lines: auto, homeowners, renters, umbrella, coverage limits and deductible structures
  • Commercial lines: general liability, commercial property, workers compensation, commercial auto, business owner policies
  • Life and health: term and permanent life, disability income, Medicare supplement and Medicare Advantage
  • Risk assessment and exposure analysis, including reviewing a client's current declarations page for gaps
  • Quoting and rating across multiple carriers, and comparative rating tools
  • Agency management systems: Applied Epic, AMS360, EZLynx, HawkSoft or the carrier's own platform
  • Underwriting submission: applications, supporting documents, loss runs, working a risk with an underwriter
  • Policy servicing: endorsements, certificates of insurance, binders, cancellations and reinstatements
  • Renewal review and remarketing when a carrier takes a rate increase
  • Claims support: first notice of loss, adjuster coordination, and managing client expectations through a claim

Soft skills

  • Explaining a coverage limit or an exclusion so a client actually understands what they bought
  • Recommending more coverage than the client asked for, and being able to justify it
  • Calling a renewal before the client sees the rate increase rather than after
  • Holding a difficult conversation when a claim is denied and you did not write the policy
  • Prospecting consistently rather than living off referrals from one good year
  • Cross-selling naturally during a service call without turning it into a pitch
  • Documenting every conversation, because errors and omissions exposure is real
  • Working with underwriters as partners rather than obstacles
  • Keeping continuing education current before the deadline, not during the final week
  • Staying honest about what a policy will not do, even when it costs you the sale
Experience

How to write insurance agent experience

Formula: lines written plus volume in units plus retention plus how you sourced the business. 'Sold insurance policies to clients' is invisible. Policies written per month, households managed, retention at renewal and policies per household are the metrics agencies run their own reviews on.

Be explicit about captive versus independent, because they are different jobs. A captive agent sells one carrier's products with that carrier's leads, brand and training. An independent agent places business across multiple appointed carriers and has to know markets, appetites and underwriting differences. Agencies hire for one or the other and the transition is a real discussion.

Weak- Sold auto, home and life insurance policies and provided customer service to existing policyholders.
Strong- Built and serviced a personal and small commercial lines book to 1,240 policies across 610 households, writing an average of 31 new policies a month across 11 appointed carriers, holding 93% renewal retention and lifting policies per household from 1.6 to 2.04 through a scheduled annual review programme.
What to include
Lines of authority - captive or independent - carrier appointments - policies in force and households - new policies per month - renewal retention - policies per household - agency management system - how leads were sourced.
Education

Licensing, designations and education

Insurance producers are licensed state by state, and the licence is granted by line of authority rather than as a single blanket permission. The usual pattern is state-approved pre-licensing coursework, a state examination per line, a background check, and then appointment by each carrier you write for. Nonresident licences let you write in other states, and continuing education is required to renew. Selling variable annuities or variable life adds a securities requirement on top of the insurance licence, typically FINRA registration through the Series 6 or Series 7 with a state securities registration such as the Series 63.

  • Resident state and lines of authority, plus every nonresident state you are licensed in
  • Carrier appointments, or the number of them if the list is long
  • Securities registrations if you sell variable products, named exactly - Series 6 or Series 7, Series 63
  • Property and casualty designations: CPCU, CIC, CISR, AAI, ARM
  • Life and financial designations: CLU, ChFC, FSCP, LUTCF
  • Continuing education completed, with ethics hours noted
  • Degree, if you have one, in a single line - insurance hires on licence and production, not on degree
Careful
Never list a designation you are still studying for as though you hold it. CPCU, CIC and CLU are earned credentials with published requirements, and agencies verify them.
New producers

Insurance resume with no book yet

Carriers and agencies hire unlicensed candidates and sponsor the licence more often than people expect, because the industry has a permanent recruitment problem. What they screen for is the ability to make calls that nobody asked for and keep making them, so evidence of that from any previous job carries real weight.

If you are already licensed, put the lines and the date at the top - it saves the employer the sponsorship cost and moves you ahead of candidates who are not. Then translate prior work: retail and call centre roles show volume and resilience, banking and teller work shows compliance and referral behaviour, and service roles show the retention instinct that agencies value most.

  • Lines of authority already held, with the state and the date passed
  • Pre-licensing coursework completed or the exam date booked, if you are not licensed yet
  • Transferable sales numbers: calls per day, quota attainment, conversion rate
  • Customer service or retention results from any previous role
  • Bilingual ability, if you have it - agencies serving a language community actively recruit for it

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The builder keeps your lines of authority and retention numbers near the top and the layout parseable, so the same document works for a captive carrier office and an independent agency.

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Mistakes

Common mistakes

Licence written as 'fully licensed'

Lines of authority are specific and separate. Property and casualty is not life and health. Write them as your state issues them, with the states, or you match no search and answer no question.

Production without retention

Anybody can write policies for a quarter. Renewal retention is what an agency principal actually cares about, because acquiring a household costs far more than keeping one.

Captive and independent experience blurred

They demand different skills. Captive is brand, leads and one product set; independent is market knowledge, appetite matching and multiple carrier relationships. Say which you did and for how long.

Carrier appointments left out

An independent agency reads your appointment list as a map of the markets you already know. Name the carriers, or at least the count and the segments they cover.

Designations claimed before they are earned

Writing CPCU or CLU after your name when you have passed two courses is a verifiable misstatement. Write it as courses completed toward the designation instead, which is genuinely a positive.

The servicing half of the job ignored

Endorsements, certificates, claims support and renewal reviews are most of the work and most of the retention. A resume that is pure sales reads as somebody who will hand their book to someone else to clean up.

Takeaways

Takeaways

Remember

  • Lines of authority and states written exactly
  • Book size in policies and households, not adjectives
  • Renewal retention and policies per household near the top
  • Captive or independent stated plainly
  • Carrier appointments and agency management system named
  • Only designations you have actually earned
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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

By line of authority and by state, written the way your state issues it. Property and casualty, life, accident and health, and personal lines are separate permissions, and an agency hiring a commercial producer will not consider a life-only licence. Name your resident state first, then any nonresident states. If you are appointed with specific carriers, list them or give the count, because appointments tell an independent agency which markets you already know how to place business with.
Yes, in emphasis. A captive agency wants someone who will work its brand, its leads and its product set with discipline, so lead with activity, conversion and adherence to a sales process. An independent agency wants market knowledge: which carriers write what, how appetites differ, how you handle a risk that three markets decline. If you are moving from captive to independent, address it directly rather than hoping nobody notices, because the learning curve on carrier appetite is the thing they worry about.
In units and ratios rather than in client names or carrier-confidential figures. Policies in force, households or accounts managed, new policies written per month, policies per household, and renewal retention are all perfectly safe and far more informative than a premium total. Never list individual clients, and never take client data with you when you change agencies - that is a legal problem, not a resume question.
Because the economics of an agency are renewal economics. Acquiring a new household costs marketing spend and producer time; keeping one costs a phone call. A producer with strong writing numbers and weak retention is generating work for the service team and churn for the carrier, and principals learn to spot it. Putting renewal retention and policies per household on the resume answers the question they were going to ask in the second interview anyway.
The ones that match your side of the business. On the property and casualty side, CPCU is the senior credential, with CIC, CISR, AAI and ARM covering counselling, service and risk management. On the life and financial side, CLU and ChFC are the established ones, with FSCP and LUTCF earlier on the path. List only what you have completed, and if you are partway through a programme, write it as courses completed toward the designation rather than claiming the letters.
Not for ordinary property, casualty, life or health products. You do need securities registration for variable products such as variable annuities and variable universal life, because those are securities as well as insurance. That typically means FINRA registration through the Series 6 or Series 7 together with a state securities registration such as the Series 63, sponsored by a broker-dealer. If you hold them, list them precisely, because they open a product line most producers cannot sell.
No. Commission arrangements differ by carrier, by line and by agency, and stating one as though it were standard is both inaccurate and bad negotiating. The same applies to income figures. Show the things that are portable and verifiable instead - policies written, households managed, retention, cross-sell ratio, quota attainment as a percentage - and leave compensation to the conversation with the hiring principal.
Yes - the full sample above, and all templates on this page. You can assemble your own resume from any of them in the builder for free and see the result; downloading the finished PDF is paid, by subscription or a one-time payment. The builder keeps the layout parseable so your lines of authority, carrier names and designations are all found by the screening system.
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