American Online Insurance School

What it is

American Online Insurance School sells online continuing education and pre-licensing courses to insurance agents in the United States. It serves two readers: licensed producers who need CE hours to renew a license, and newcomers preparing for a state pre-licensing exam. The footer names the business as "Florida School of Insurance dba American Online Insurance School", with a copyright line running from 1999. Its Maryland site gives the school's provider number for that state as 208781, and every course, price and credit figure in this entry comes from that Maryland catalog.

The product is a self-service shop. A learner chooses the license they hold, sees the courses and discount packages that count toward it, adds them to a cart and studies online. The site's menu also lists Packages, Courses, Webcasts and Classroom sections, so the online courses are not the only format on offer.

How credit is matched to a license

The catalog is built around a license filter. The site asks learners to "choose a license before adding any courses to your cart if you will be taking them for continuing education credits", and the filter covers Annuity Best Interest 4, Dual Licensed Life/Health AND Property/Casualty, Ethics, Flood, Health, Life, Life and Health, LTC / LTC Partnership, and Property and Casualty. Choosing a specific license also reveals the discount packages for it.

Each course states its total hours and then a line headed "Credit Hours Apply To", which breaks the credit down by license type. Ethics for the Professional, for example, is 10 credit hours, "3 Hours Ethics & 7 Hours Life/Health", and counts as 10 credits for Life and Health, Dual Licensed, Health and Life, and 3 credits toward the Ethics requirement. Flood II is a "Mandatory Flood class" of four credit hours, two of flood and two of property and casualty. This breakdown is the most useful part of the catalog for a producer who holds more than one line of authority, because it shows before purchase how a course will count.

The CE catalog

The Maryland course list mixes life and health, ethics, annuity, flood and property-casualty courses, and the site says it is "constantly adding courses to our catalog" and invites learners to request any course they need that is missing. The prices are low and printed per course:

• Life and health: A Historical Perspective on Health Insurance, $15.50 for 10 credit hours or $13.50 for an 8-hour version; A Discussion on Life Insurance (2021), $15.00 for 10 hours; Insurance, Retirement Plans, & Ethics, $17.50 for 10 hours, covering life insurance, disability income and retirement plans; and Observations & Challenges in Financial Planning, $16.50 for 11 hours.
• Ethics: Ethics, $9.00, which "provides the three hours of mandatory C.E. requirements in Ethics"; The Ethics Narrative, $12.00 for three hours; Ethics in the Financial Services Industry, $15.00 for three hours; Ethics for the Professional, $15.50 for 10 hours; and Financial Crimes with Ethics, $17.50 for 11 hours, of which 3 are ethics credits, on white-collar crime and how to help clients recognize and avoid it.
• Annuities: Annuity Best Interest II, $17.50, a 4-hour course listed as "Classroom Equivalent". The page says this "One-time training must be complete prior to selling annuity products" and that the course "satisfies the 4-hour Best Interest annuity" requirement. It covers annuities, variable annuities and insurance-like investment contracts, suitability terms, optional benefits, underwriting, group contracts and tax treatment, with an appendix of annotated excerpts from the state insurance code.
• Property and casualty: Flood II, $12.00, on flood insurance and the National Flood Insurance Plan; Commercial Auto/Commercial Property & Mold, $16.50 for 11 hours; Personal/Commercial Liability & Umbrella Insurance, $15.00, which "counts towards 11 hours of Property/Casualty"; and two risk courses at $17.00 each, Risk Management & General Liability and Liability Management (an updated version of the General Liability course), each counting for up to 10 hours toward property and casualty.

The longer courses go into detail. The umbrella course reviews personal liability under the personal auto and homeowners policies before covering what personal umbrella policies add: personal injury, property damage and defense costs. The commercial course describes the commercial auto policy, then commercial property insurance and the nuances of insuring against mold. The two risk courses explain how risks are underwritten, how claims are paid and how regulators handle the subject, and the life insurance course opens with the history of the industry and the agency distribution system.

The ethics courses share a common core. They explore "the Financial Professional's role and responsibilities in an ever changing and even more complex arena", cover rebating and replacement, and set the goal that the professional "becomes aware of when replacement is replacement and not churning or twisting", with the rules for replacement and the fiduciary duties of the financial professional. Several longer courses promise case studies "to bring this topic to life" and answers to the questions clients most often ask.

Pre-licensing

For new agents, the site sells three pre-licensing courses at $99.00 each, one for the Health license, one for the Life-only license and one for the combined Life & Health license. Each is taught by David "Big Dog" Watson "via an engaging transcription of his live course." The listing calls them "New and improved! Totally overhauled for 2026, containing all new information" and adds: "You won't find a finer pre-licensing course on the market." The packages page describes the pre-licensing packages as "All-in-one packages containing everything you need to prepare and pass the state pre-licensing exam."

Packages

Beside single courses, the school offers what it calls Online CE Packages: "discount packages for anyone seeking a specific number of CE credits." These are aimed at a producer who needs a set number of hours and would rather buy them as one bundle; the page points anyone who only needs particular courses to the course catalog instead. Package prices appear once a license is chosen.

Who it suits

American Online Insurance School suits licensed insurance producers who want the required CE hours at a low price, studied online at their own pace, and who value seeing exactly which license each credit applies to. Dual-licensed agents get the clearest benefit from the credit breakdown. Agents who sell annuities can complete the 4-hour Best Interest training here, property-casualty agents can pick up the mandatory flood class for $12.00, and anyone short on ethics hours has several ethics courses to choose from, starting at $9.00. Newcomers aiming for a life, health, or combined life and health license can buy a pre-licensing course at $99.00 built on David Watson's live teaching.

Learners who prefer live teaching should look at the Webcasts and Classroom sections rather than the self-study catalog. The catalog figures here are for Maryland, and a producer licensed elsewhere should check that the courses carry credit in their own state. It is insurance-only, so it holds nothing for other professions.