When new insurance companies want to form in Washington or existing companies want to do business in our state, our Company Licensing and Compliance team is one of their first stops. We process admissions applications, licenses and certificates of registration for property and casualty, life, disability, and health insurers, as well as other regulated entities such as service contract providers, risk retention groups and charities issuing gift annuities.
To form a new insurance company domiciled in Washington, you must apply for and obtain a solicitation permit. Solicitation permits are required to register your company with the Washington Secretary of State, solicit capital and submit a primary application.
You will need a solicitation permit if you want to form a new domestic:
- Incorporated stock insurer
- Incorporated mutual insurer
- Incorporated specific risks mutual property insurer only
- Incorporated mutual assessment property insurer only
- Incorporated farm mutual assessment property insurer only
- Reciprocal insurer
- Health care service contractor
- Health maintenance organization
There is no solicitation permit application form. RCW 48.06.040 explains what documents you need to provide our office. Once you have these documents, mail us a hardcopy of the application materials to:
Mailing address:
Attn: Company Supervision Division
Office of the Insurance Commissioner
PO Box 40255
Olympia, WA 98504-0255
Delivery (street) address:
Attn: Company Supervision Division
Office of the Insurance Commissioner
5000 Capitol Blvd SE
Tumwater, WA 98501
Note: USPS will only accept the PO Box mailing address and does not allow other shippers to use that address. All non-USPS shippers must use the street address. Use of an incorrect address may result in a returned application.
Once issued, solicitation permits are valid for two years, unless we approve your request for a reasonable extension for good cause. If your solicitation permit expires, you must stop advertising, soliciting or receiving any funds, and you can’t submit a primary application.
It depends. Our goal is to review applications and issue a decision within 60 days. When we receive your application, we will send you an estimated timeline for due dates to meet this goal.
If we find any deficiencies in your application, we will give you 15 business days to correct them. If you don’t respond in a timely manner, your review may take longer than 60 days.
After your solicitation permit is issued, we will formally approve your articles of incorporation and bylaws and you can legally form your company. You must register with the Washington Secretary of State. If you plan to be a stock insurer, you must solicit capital in accordance with the conditions of your permit.
Some entities are required to appoint our state's insurance commissioner as their attorney to receive service of legal process. This means that all legal processes issued against these entities must be served to the commissioner. The service of legal process form requires you to designate a contact person so we can forward any legal process served to you.
Service of legal process form for insurance carriers
All insurance carriers, foreign and domestic, must provide a UCAA Form 12 when they register or submit certain corporate amendment applications.
Service of legal process form for other regulated entities
You will need to complete our service of legal process form (PDF 802.93KB) and email it to Company Licensing and Compliance if you are one of these regulated entities:
- Service contract provider
- Protection product guaranteee provider
- Life settlement provider
- Reinsurance intermediary broker of manager
- Health care discount plan organization
- Charitable gift annuity issuer
- Risk purchasing group
- Risk retention group
- Health care benefit manager
Yes. You can send documents notarized by a remote online notary who:
- Is authorized in Washington
- Uses audio or video for identification
- Notarizes documents with tamper-evident technologies
The notary stamp must be a digital image that looks like a traditional notary stamp. It also needs to show the notarization happened remotely.