Wisconsin will not let a company sell or offer motor club service until it has put security in front of the Commissioner of Insurance — either $25,000 in cash or approved securities on deposit, or, in lieu of that, a $50,000 bond payable to the State of Wisconsin under Wis. Stat. 616.72. Ours is $500 flat, and the price you see is the price at checkout. The application collects no credit information.
















A fixed-amount insurance filing is about the simplest thing in surety. Here is the entire process:
Company details, entity type, contact and owner information, an effective date and a term. That is the whole application — there is no credit section to fill out, because this application collects no credit information.
Fixed-amount filings like this are among the thousands of bond types that issue right after purchase. At most, 1–2 business days.
Your executed $50,000 bond and power of attorney arrive by email, ready to notarize and send to OCI with the rest of the form 21-190 packet. Wet-ink original mailed on request — the Commissioner wants ink and a notary seal on this one.
Wisconsin does not regulate motor clubs through the DMV — it regulates them as miscellaneous insurers, under subchapter IV of Wis. Stat. ch. 616, administered by the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance. The test at 616.71(12) is a counting exercise: furnish, render or procure three or more of eleven listed services — towing, emergency road, insurance, bail bond, legal, discount, financial, buying and selling, theft, map and touring service — in connection with someone’s ownership, operation, use or maintenance of a motor vehicle, and you are a "company" selling motor club service. Bundle three of those into a membership and the certificate-of-authority requirement attaches, whatever you call the product.
Section 616.72 gives you two ways to satisfy the Commissioner and only one of them is cheap. You can deposit $25,000 in cash or securities the Commissioner approves, or file a bond in the form the Commissioner prescribes, payable to the state of Wisconsin, in the sum of $50,000, with corporate surety the Commissioner approves. The bond is conditioned on the faithful performance in the sale or rendering of motor club service and on payment of any fines or penalties levied for failure to comply with the chapter — so it answers to the members who bought a service contract you did not honor, and to the state. Once the security is on file, the statute makes issuing the certificate of authority a duty, not a discretion.
It is not insurance for you — if the surety pays a claim, you repay the surety. The statute is unusually explicit that the deposit or bond "is not required in any instance as a penalty, but for the protection of the public only." Your certificate of authority expires every July 1 under 616.74(3), and OCI’s bond form is written to the license period expiring not later than July 2 and every succeeding renewal period — which is why the term on this bond lands on that date rather than a year from your effective date. We track it and send renewal notices 60 and 30 days out.
These are the actual issuing fields — no credit section, because this application collects no credit information.
Start the application →$500 flat for the $50,000 filing, issued the moment you pay, e-signed and ready for the OCI packet. Free until issued.