The short version: we verify licenses against state government records where those records are machine-accessible, and we label everything else honestly. Three states of verification exist on this site: verified against a state source with a date, self-reported by the firm, or nothing shown. No middle ground, no invented badges.
The verified badge
When a state publishes machine-readable license data, we check the firm against it and store the result: license number, status, expiration, the date we checked, and the source URL. Texas publishes its full insurance license roll as open data through the Texas Department of Insurance, so every Texas listing with a verified badge was checked against that dataset. Other states expose lookups in forms we can query; where they do, we use them.
The self-reported label
Firms can join and tell us their license numbers before our verification pipeline reaches their state. Those profiles say self-reported, not verified, until we can check them. We would rather show an honest gap than a badge that means nothing.
Re-verification
Licenses lapse. Top Pick firms are re-checked monthly, other firms quarterly. If a license expires or a verification fails, the badge comes down until the record is clean.
What we do not do
We do not sell leads, we do not accept payment for verification, and member firms that work with our sister marketing practice are disclosed on their profiles and are ineligible for Top Pick placement. The directory is neutral on purpose, because the whole point of this site is that somebody finally built it straight.