Almost everything in this book is enforced administratively. Three provisions are not. Insurance Code § 6002.351 provides that an individual or organization COMMITS AN OFFENSE if it violates Insurance Code § 6002.151, § 6002.152, or § 6002.154 — and that an offense under that section is a CLASS B MISDEMEANOR. Venue is in TRAVIS COUNTY or in the county in which the offense is committed. Note what that structure means in practice: the state may bring a prosecution where the conduct happened or at the seat of government, and a firm operating across Texas cannot assume the forum will be local to it.

The three sections are not chosen at random, and a reader of this book will recognize all of them as the foundations everything else rests on. Insurance Code § 6002.151 is the FIRM REGISTRATION CERTIFICATE requirement — an individual or organization may not engage in the business without one. Insurance Code § 6002.152 is the BRANCH OFFICE certificate requirement, which Chapter 3 covered: each separate office location beyond the one named on the firm’s own certificate must hold its own. And Insurance Code § 6002.154 is the LICENSING provision — the requirement that a registered firm employ at least one of the named classes, that a licensee hold a license conditioned on a written examination, and that a licensee be an employee or agent of a registered firm to engage in the activity the license was granted for.

Set those three beside the rest of the chapter and the line the Legislature has drawn is visible. Failing to label a panel, missing a notification deadline, or letting insurance lapse are administrative failures with administrative consequences. Operating without a certificate, opening an office without one, or working outside the licensing structure are the failures that reach a criminal court. It is the same distinction the whole book has been built on — the difference between doing regulated work badly and doing it without authority — and it is the sharpest place the statute states which of the two it regards as more serious.