Georgia MLO licensing requirements

Georgia is the cleanest state in this batch on pre-licensure education: its own regulator states plainly that it adds nothing to the federal 20-hour minimum.

One regulator: the Department of Banking and Finance

The Georgia Department of Banking and Finance licenses mortgage loan originators under Title 7, Chapter 1, Article 13 of the Official Code of Georgia, with implementing rules in Chapter 80-11 of the Georgia Administrative Rules.

Pre-licensure education: no Georgia add-on, confirmed directly

The department’s own MLO education and testing page states it plainly: “20 hours of pre-licensure education (PE) is required in order to be eligible for a Georgia MLO license. Georgia does not have any state specific requirements for pre-licensure education.” That is an explicit no, not an absence of information, and it puts Georgia in the same no-additional-hours category as Florida on pre-licensure, distinct from Texas’s 23-hour requirement and distinct from California’s and New York’s in-course carve-outs.

Continuing education carves out 1 hour for Georgia content

Renewal requires the federal 8-hour minimum, due by October 31 each year, and the same page states “One (1) hour of Georgia specific education is required for CE.” As with California’s 1-hour DFPI carve-out, this is 1 hour spent on Georgia-specific material inside the 8-hour total, not an hour added on top of it.

The application fee is confirmed; the bond is not

Georgia’s own licensing page states the Mortgage Loan Originator License costs “$200 plus additional NMLS fees,” which we can state directly since it is a simple official application fee, not a computed figure. A specific individual surety bond requirement for MLOs was not stated on the pages we could reach in this pass (Georgia’s bond requirements are described per O.C.G.A. Title 7, Chapter 1, Article 13, which we did not have full statutory text access to confirm); rather than guess whether it applies to individuals or only to sponsoring entities, that item is routed to the department’s own licensing checklist and the published matrix.

Sources

The regulator identity, the no-PE-add-on statement, and the 1-hour CE carve-out are all stated directly on the department’s own MLO education and testing page, last verified 2026-07-29.

• Department page (source for the PE/CE language): dbf.georgia.gov/mb-brokers-lenders-and-originators/mlo-education-testing
• Application requirements: dbf.georgia.gov/mb-brokers-lenders-and-originators/how-do-i-apply-mortgage-license
• Fees and bond matrix: getlicensemap.com

For the full ordered national sequence, see how to become an MLO, the state-steps wizard, and the cost breakdown tool.