How to verify an insurance agent's license in Texas (TDI lookup, 2026)

Someone hands you a business card. The card says "licensed insurance agent." Five minutes from now you might hand them your debit card information and a year of premium payments. The question that should sit between those two moments — are they actually licensed — almost never gets asked.

It should. Texas has roughly 234,000 active insurance licenses on file. Some belong to agents who finished their Continuing Education credits last week. Some belong to people whose license expired three years ago and who are still quoting policies anyway. Some belong to agents the Texas Department of Insurance has formally disciplined for misappropriating premium, forging signatures, or selling policies that don't exist.

You can tell which is which in under sixty seconds. Here's how.

The lookup is at tdi.texas.gov — and it's free

The Texas Department of Insurance maintains a public license search at tdi.texas.gov. It's free, it requires no account, and it's authoritative. Anything an agent tells you about their license — the date, the type, the status — you can check against TDI's own record in real time.

Three fields are worth typing into the search:

• Agent name. Use the legal name. "Jorge A. Gonzalez" not "Jay." If they registered a DBA (doing-business-as) agency name, the agency is searchable separately.
• License number. TX assigns a 5-7 digit license number to every licensee. It's printed on the agent's wall certificate and on most carrier-issued paperwork.
• NPN. The National Producer Number — a 7-digit ID that follows the agent across states. Some agents put it in their email signature. It's the most reliable lookup if you have it.

If the agent's name doesn't return a record, that's the entire conversation. Don't take "oh I'm under my agency's license" as an answer — Texas requires every individual selling insurance to be individually licensed.

What the result page tells you

Once you've found the agent, four pieces of the record matter more than the rest.

License status

The status field will read Active, Expired, Cancelled, Surrendered, or Suspended. Anything other than Active is a hard stop. An expired license means continuing education credits weren't filed on time. A surrendered license usually means the agent gave it up voluntarily, often as part of settling a complaint without going through formal discipline. A suspended license is what happens when TDI has already made a finding against them.

People with non-Active licenses are not allowed to sell, quote, or service insurance in Texas. If someone's actively trying to write you a policy with a Cancelled status, it's not paperwork lag — it's the actual situation.

License type

Texas has dozens of license categories. The two that matter for most consumers are:

• General Lines - Property and Casualty (covers auto, home, commercial, umbrella, motorcycle, boat)
• General Lines - Life, Accident, Health, and HMO (covers life, disability, Medicare supplements, individual health)

An agent selling you auto insurance must hold the P&C license. An agent quoting life must hold the Life license. Many hold both, but plenty don't. If the agent's TDI record shows only a Life license and they're quoting your homeowner's policy, that's a regulatory problem.

Lines of authority

Inside each license type, agents are appointed by specific carriers to sell specific products. The TDI record shows the carriers — and that's how you confirm an agent really represents the company they claim to.

If someone tells you they "work with State Farm" but State Farm doesn't appear in their appointment list at TDI, they're not actually authorized to write a State Farm policy. They might be referring you to State Farm and collecting nothing, which is fine, or they might be misrepresenting the relationship, which is fraud.

Disciplinary actions

The TDI public record includes disciplinary history. Most agents have a clean record. The ones who don't show entries like Cease and Desist, Civil Penalty, Probation, or Revocation. Each entry links to the underlying order if you want to read what happened — usually a 4-8 page PDF describing the complaint.

Texas takes about 60-90 days to publish a new disciplinary action after it's finalized, so a recent action might not appear yet. But anything older than three months will be there if it exists.

The two failure modes consumers fall into

After watching enough license verifications go sideways, the same two mistakes show up.

Mistake one: trusting the agency name and skipping the agent. An agency can be properly licensed while one of its agents isn't. If the person selling you the policy isn't on TDI's record, the agency's good standing doesn't protect you when something goes wrong. Ask which specific person will write your policy and verify that name.

Mistake two: confusing carrier-side verification with agent-side verification. You can call State Farm and confirm "yes, this person is an appointed agent." That confirms the appointment exists — it doesn't tell you about discipline history, related-name complaints, or whether their P&C license is current. Always verify at TDI, not at the carrier.

Captive vs independent agents — what the license tells you

Captive agents are appointed to a single carrier (State Farm, Allstate, Farmers, USAA). Their TDI record shows one company in the carrier appointment list. They can only sell that company's products.

Independent agents appear with three to fifteen carrier appointments on average. The carriers they represent are listed openly on the TDI record. If your independent agent claims they "shop the whole market" but their appointment list shows two regional carriers, that's a useful reality check on how broad the shop actually goes.

Texas Farm Bureau works on a hybrid model — members buy through Texas Farm Bureau Insurance Services, which holds the appointments. AAA Texas uses a similar setup. Both will show on TDI as Texas Farm Bureau or AAA appointments specifically.

The license doesn't tell you whether a captive or independent agent will get you a better rate. It tells you what they're permitted to quote.

What to do after the license checks out

Verification confirms an agent is allowed to operate. It doesn't tell you whether they're competent, available, or fair on price. Three follow-up checks help:

1. Carrier appointment depth. Independent agents with three carriers will quote three. Agents with twelve will quote twelve. More appointments = better odds of finding your specific risk profile a competitive rate. This data is on TDI too.

2. Years in business. Look at the issue date on the license. Five-plus years suggests they survived at least one full underwriting cycle and one storm season — both useful experience for a Texas agent.

3. Specialty coverage. Some agents work mostly auto, some mostly home, some mostly commercial. Surplus Lines authorization (a separate TDI license type) matters if you have non-standard risk (high-value home, rideshare driver, business with a fleet, etc.). Check whether they have it.

InsurConnect maintains a TDI-verified directory of Texas insurance agencies with all of this information already pulled — license status, carrier count, years in business, and product specialties — so the verification step happens once at our end instead of fifteen times at yours.

Common questions

Does TDI cover agents licensed in other states? No. TDI's public lookup is Texas-resident and Texas-non-resident-but-licensed-in-Texas. An agent licensed only in Oklahoma can't sell you a Texas policy; their record won't appear. Cross-state agents will appear if they hold a non-resident TX license.

What if the lookup says "agency" but no individual name? Agencies have their own licenses separate from individual agents. The agency license confirms the business is allowed to operate; you still need to verify the specific person you're talking to.

Is the TDI search the same as the National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR)? Different sources. NIPR is the national-level registry, useful for cross-state checks. TDI is the Texas-state record. Both are authoritative for their respective scopes.

What happens if I find disciplinary history? Read the underlying order. A 2018 cease-and-desist for unrelated commercial-trucking license issues is different from a 2024 finding of premium misappropriation. Context matters. Outside of revocation, a single mid-career action doesn't always disqualify someone — but it should change how you read their pitch.

The short version

Type their name into tdi.texas.gov. Confirm Active status, the right license type, the carrier appointments they claim to represent, and zero recent disciplinary findings. The whole check takes less time than reading this paragraph. If you're not willing to spend that minute, you're handing your money to whoever shows up.