An insurer once asked New York's insurance regulator which activities unlicensed employees of its agents and brokers could perform, and submitted a list of tasks for review. In an opinion dated December 1, 2004, the Office of General Counsel approved the list. It included answering phones, assisting with advertising and mailing campaigns, taking loss information from customers and scheduling appointments "provided there is no discussion about insurance coverage, cost or related issues."
That parenthetical is the most useful sentence a growing agency in New York can read before its first hire. The same 2004 opinion attached two conditions to everything on the list: the employee is not compensated based upon sales, and there is no discussion of coverage. It also warned that the licensee "must properly supervise the non-licensee and will be held strictly accountable by the Department for the activities of such non-licensees."
The direct answer for any producer planning to scale is that an unlicensed assistant in New York can take over most of the administrative and scheduling load, while every conversation about coverage, price or terms, and every dollar of production-based pay, stays with licensed staff. Building that boundary into the workflow before the hire is cheaper than discovering it during an audit.
Why the First Hire Is Usually Unlicensed
The economics push agents toward administrative help long before they can afford another producer. Salesforce's State of Sales research, drawn from 7,775 sales professionals in 38 countries and published in December 2022, found that "sales reps spend just 28% of their time selling." The other hours go to data entry, scheduling, follow-up and paperwork, the work an assistant is hired to absorb.
Real estate has long run on the same model. The National Association of Realtors reported in 2013 that 18 percent of its members had at least one personal assistant and that about half of those assistants held a real estate license. The figure is more than a decade old, but it captures a durable split, since roughly half of the assistants in that survey were working without a license and needed clear limits on what they did.
Our guide to making your first hire covered when the math justifies bringing someone on. The licensing boundary decides what that person can do on day one.
The Insurance Line in New York
New York Insurance Law section 2102 is blunt. "No person, firm, association or corporation shall act as an insurance producer, insurance adjuster or life settlement broker in this state without having authority to do so by virtue of a license issued and in force," the statute reads. The penalty for a violation can reach five hundred dollars for each transaction.
The exemptions sit in section 2101. The definition of an insurance agent excludes a regular salaried employee of a licensed agent who does not solicit or accept applications from the public outside the agent's office. That employee also cannot receive compensation "directly dependent upon the amount of business done." The broker definition carves out employees whose activities are executive, administrative, managerial or clerical and are "only indirectly related to the sale, solicitation or negotiation of insurance."
The national model law that most states build on defines the activity an assistant must avoid. Under the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' Producer Licensing Model Act, to negotiate means "the act of conferring directly with or offering advice directly to a purchaser or prospective purchaser of a particular contract of insurance concerning any of the substantive benefits, terms or conditions of the contract." A sentence from an assistant about why one deductible makes more sense than another fits that description, and so does a casual remark about what a policy covers.
A 2001 opinion held that unlicensed staff working outside the office "may not engage in any activity that is not clerical or administrative." The same opinion said they "may not engage in non-clerical or administrative activities by telecommuting from a home office," which matters for agencies hiring remote or virtual assistants. A 2005 opinion addressed an agency that wanted to pay unlicensed staff a bonus for each additional coverage sold. It found that a per-policy bonus "is compensation directly dependent upon the amount of business done," and concluded that the statutes prohibit it.
Carriers can tighten these limits on their own. The 2004 opinion noted that "an insurer may restrict or prohibit the delegation of certain activities or duties to non-licensees," so an agency's appointment agreements belong in the same review as the statute.
The Real Estate Line in New York
The New York Department of State publishes its own guidance on unlicensed real estate assistants, and it reads like a job description. Assistants may answer the phone, forward calls, take messages and arrange appointments by telephone for the licensee. They may also assemble documents for closing, type contract forms for broker approval, compute commission checks, place or remove signs, gather information for a comparative market analysis and schedule showings of listed property for licensees.
The department frames the boundary by reference to the law rather than with a list of prohibitions. Unlicensed assistants "may engage in any office activities that are not specified in Section 440 of Article 12A" of the Real Property Law, which defines the activities that require a license. Two further lines shape how the role is built. "If compensated on a completed transaction basis, the assistant must be licensed as a real estate salesperson," the guidance states, and time spent in these activities "may not be counted toward any qualifying experience requirements to obtain a real estate license."
The stakes on the real estate side include the commission itself. Real Property Law section 442-d bars anyone from suing to collect compensation "without alleging and proving that such person was a duly licensed real estate broker or real estate salesperson on the date when the alleged cause of action arose." Section 442-e makes a violation of the article a misdemeanor.
Designing the Handoff
An agency that wants the efficiency without the exposure builds the boundary into its scripts and systems. The assistant's inbound script ends at the point where a prospect asks about coverage, price or terms, with a set line that routes the call to a licensed producer and books the next available slot. The New York opinion's own example of acceptable intake is narrow. It lets staff "secure expiration dates from prospects limited to the date the policy expires and the current carrier." A well-built intake form asks for exactly that and nothing more.
Salary or hourly pay, without per-policy or per-closing bonuses, keeps an unlicensed assistant inside the New York exemptions on both the insurance and real estate sides. Agencies that want to reward an assistant for growth can tie a bonus to licensing, since an assistant who passes the exam can then take on the conversations and the pay structure the law reserves for licensees.
Remote staff deserve a separate review. The 2001 opinion's telecommuting language means a virtual assistant working from home should be held to strictly clerical and administrative tasks. An agency using automation should check that its tools do not put an unlicensed person in front of a quoting screen. Our look at building a lean agency stack covered intake and automated quoting, and the same stack can enforce the handoff by sending any quote request straight to a licensed queue.
The rules differ by state, and some are stricter. Florida's rule on unlawful activities by unlicensed agency personnel lists actions that "are never allowable," including "comparing insurance products; advising as to insurance needs or insurance matters; or interpreting policies or coverages." Agencies operating across state lines should check each state's rule rather than assuming New York's exemptions travel. This guide is general information rather than legal advice, and an agency's counsel or its carriers' compliance teams are the right final check on any job description.
The 2004 New York list that opened this story included one more approved task, permission for unlicensed staff to "receive requests for coverage for transmittal to the agent or a licensed sales producer." Receiving and passing along the request is the assistant's job, and the conversation that follows belongs to a licensee.
