How to Get a Property and Casualty License

A property and casualty license is the state producer license that lets you sell, solicit, or negotiate insurance covering homes, cars, businesses, and legal liability. There is no national property and casualty insurance license: each state issues its own, so the exact rules depend on where you live. The sequence is similar almost everywhere. You meet a few basic qualifications, complete any pre-licensing education your state requires, pass the state's property and casualty exam, submit fingerprints for a background check, and apply for the license. Pre-licensing hours run from none in Texas to 200 in Florida, and the whole process usually costs a few hundred dollars and takes several weeks to a few months.

What the license lets you sell

A property and casualty (P&C) license authorizes you to sell two related kinds of coverage. Property insurance covers direct or consequential loss or damage to property of every kind, and casualty insurance covers legal liability, including liability for death, injury, or disability, or damage to someone else's property. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) Producer Licensing Model Act^[1], the model most state licensing laws follow, defines both as separate lines of authority, and most states license them together on one producer license.

In practice, the license spans both consumer and business products: homeowners, renters, personal auto, and umbrella policies for individuals, plus commercial property, general liability, commercial auto, business owners, and workers compensation policies for companies. The same license goes by different names. Texas issues a "General Lines - Property and Casualty" license, Florida issues its general lines agent license (class 2-20), and California issues property and casualty broker-agent licenses. The scope is the same everywhere: the full property and casualty lines, personal and commercial.

Personal lines versus the full license

Personal lines is a separate, narrower line of authority, defined in the model act as property and casualty coverage sold to individuals and families for primarily noncommercial purposes. A personal lines license covers consumer products such as auto and homeowners policies, but stops at commercial risks such as general liability coverage for a business. The full P&C license includes everything the personal lines license covers plus the commercial lines, so agents who want business clients generally choose the full license. California treats the two as mutually exclusive: a property and casualty applicant may not apply for personal lines as well, and a personal lines applicant may not apply for property and casualty (NIPR's California licensing requirements page^[2]).

Who needs the license

Anyone who sells, solicits, or negotiates property and casualty insurance needs a producer license, and producers must hold a valid license from every state where they do business (NIPR licensing overview^[3]). The model act states the rule directly:

"A person shall not sell, solicit or negotiate insurance in this state for any class or classes of insurance unless the person is licensed for that line of authority."

The license covers selling coverage, not handling claims. Adjusting claims for insurers requires a separate adjuster license and a different exam. The other major license family, life and health, covers life insurance, annuities, and health coverage rather than property and liability risks.

The requirements every state shares

Every state applies the same baseline: you must be at least 18 years old, pass the licensing exam for your lines of authority, and clear a background check, usually with fingerprints. Under Section 6A of the model act^[1], the state commissioner must also find that you have not committed a disqualifying act, have completed any required pre-licensing course, and have paid the required fees before approving a resident license.

States add residency and work-authorization tests. Florida, for example, requires a general lines agent to be a US citizen or a legal alien with work authorization and a bona fide state resident (Fla. Stat. § 626.731^[4]). NIPR's application guidance also expects applicants to be current on federal and state tax obligations and any child support obligations (NIPR help center^[5]). No state requires a college degree: the model act's qualification list contains no education beyond any pre-licensing course the state mandates.

Pre-licensing education: from none to 200 hours

Pre-licensing education is the coursework a state requires before you may sit for its exam, and no other step varies as widely between states. Texas requires no pre-licensing education at all for a standard producer license (Texas Department of Insurance^[6]), while Florida requires 200 hours of approved coursework for its general lines license (Florida Department of Financial Services^[7]). Most states sit between the two. Where property and casualty are treated as separate lines, hours are set per line: Georgia requires a minimum of 20 hours of instruction per major line, so a candidate seeking both property and casualty completes 40 hours (Georgia insurance rules 120-2-3^[8]).

The requirement exists to prepare candidates for the exam and for the job: courses cover insurance concepts, policy types, and the state's own insurance laws. California cut its requirement sharply in 2026. Since January 1, the only pre-licensing course a property and casualty applicant must complete is a one-time 12-hour class on ethics and the California Insurance Code, including one hour on insurance fraud, after the legislature eliminated the general hours requirement (Cal. Ins. Code § 1749^[9]).

Several states also waive requirements for experienced professionals. Holders of the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) designation are exempt from the property and casualty exam in some states; the Pearson VUE Texas candidate handbook^[10], for example, lists the waiver.

The property and casualty exam

The property and casualty exam is a closed-book, computer-based multiple-choice test with two parts: a general section on insurance products and practices, and a state section on that state's insurance laws and producer duties. The model act^[1] requires the exam to test the lines of authority applied for, producer duties, and state insurance law. States contract their exams to testing companies, most often Pearson VUE, PSI, or Prometric.

What the exam looks like

Combined P&C exams in the states researched carry between 130 and 160 scored questions, plus a smaller set of unscored pretest questions, with time limits between 150 minutes and just over 3 hours. The Texas exam, for example, includes 130 questions that count toward the score (100 general plus 30 state-specific) plus 15 unscored pretest questions, in 150 minutes (Pearson VUE Texas candidate handbook^[10]). California's combined exam has 150 questions in 195 minutes (PSI California candidate bulletin^[11]). Pretest questions are mixed in unidentified, so answer everything.

Most states set the passing score at 70%, including Florida (Pearson VUE Florida candidate handbook^[12]) and Georgia (Georgia insurance rules 120-2-3^[8]). California requires 60% (PSI California bulletin^[11]). Texas is the outlier in how it reports results: scores are scaled from 0 to 100, and the passing score of 70 is neither the number nor the percentage of questions answered correctly (Pearson VUE Texas handbook^[10]).

Most states offer a combined P&C exam alongside separate property and casualty exams. Illinois is an exception: it splits each line into a General exam and a State exam, so a candidate seeking both lines takes four exams (Illinois Department of Insurance FAQ^[13]). Massachusetts requires separate property producer and casualty producer exams (NIPR Massachusetts licensing page^[14]). Testing is usually at a vendor's test centers, though some states allow remote exams: California offers remote online proctored versions of all its licensing exams, with a $43 convenience fee on top of the state's exam fee (California Department of Insurance^[15]).

How hard the property and casualty exam is

Hard enough that a large share of first-time candidates fail. Pearson VUE's published Georgia results for April to June 2026 show a 66% first-time pass rate on the Property and Casualty Agent exam and 42% among repeaters (Pearson VUE Georgia pass rates). Texas reported a 53% pass rate for its property and casualty exam in February 2021 (Texas Department of Insurance^[16]). Prep providers generally recommend about 35 to 40 hours of study, spread over several weeks rather than crammed.

What happens if you fail

You can retake the exam, and retakes are common. States set waiting periods and attempt caps: Georgia makes a failed candidate wait 14 days, and 60 days after a third failure (Georgia insurance rules 120-2-3^[8]); Florida allows five attempts per exam type in a 12-month period (Pearson VUE Florida handbook^[12]); and California bars a candidate from an exam for 12 months after a tenth failure (PSI California bulletin^[11]).

Practice tests and how to prepare

Build your study plan around the official exam content outline, then use practice tests to find your weak spots. Every exam vendor publishes a candidate handbook with a content outline that lists the testable topics and how many questions each carries, and state regulators point candidates to those outlines as the primary study tool (Pearson VUE's Georgia program page^[17] is typical).

RealEstateU offers online property and casualty pre-licensing and exam-prep courses organized around each state's content outline, with practice questions and simulated final exams. Other established providers, including Kaplan and ExamFX, publish comparable courses. Whichever provider you choose, match your study hours to the outline's topic weights and take at least one timed practice test before exam day so the pacing is familiar.

Fingerprints, the application, and your first appointment

After you pass, the remaining steps are a fingerprint-based background check and the license application, filed online through the National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR) or the state's own portal. Most states give you about a year: in Texas the application must be completed within one year of passing, or the exam must be retaken (Pearson VUE Texas handbook^[10]). Wait at least 48 hours after your scores are released before applying, so the results have time to process (NIPR help center^[5]); Illinois blocks online applications for five days after the last exam part is completed (NIPR Illinois requirements^[18]).

Fingerprinting runs through a state-designated vendor, and the cost lands on you: California's live scan fee is $74, covering the FBI check, the state Department of Justice check, and the vendor's rolling fee (NIPR California requirements^[2]). If you apply through NIPR, its transaction fee is $5.60 on top of the state fees (NIPR help center^[5]).

Getting appointed before you can sell

A license lets you sell insurance; an appointment lets you sell a specific carrier's products. No one may transact insurance until an insurer or agency officially appoints them (Pearson VUE Florida handbook^[12]). States enforce this: Illinois automatically cancels a new producer's license if an appointment is not approved within 30 days of issuance (NIPR Illinois requirements^[18]), and Florida expires a license that goes 48 months without an appointment.

What it costs and how long it takes

Budget a few hundred dollars in total and plan on several weeks to a few months. Where your state requires a course, that course is usually the largest single expense, and it typically costs a few hundred dollars depending on the provider and its features. The exam fee runs from $40 in New York to $92 per exam in Illinois among the six comparison states (PSI New York candidate bulletin; Illinois DOI FAQ^[13]). Fingerprinting adds a smaller fee on top, set by the vendor your state designates. The license fee itself runs from $50 in Texas to $215 in Illinois, with California at $188 for a two-year term and New York at $80 (Pearson VUE Texas handbook^[10]; NIPR California requirements^[2]; N.Y. Ins. Law § 2103^[19]).

All-in totals run highest in states that require long pre-licensing courses, because the course is the largest single cost, and lowest in states that require none. On time, an organized candidate typically finishes in a few weeks; the variables are course hours, exam-seat availability, and state processing, and where pre-licensing hours are high, allow a couple of months.

Taking your license to other states

A current home-state license qualifies you for a nonresident license in other states, without retaking their exams or courses. Under the model act^[1], a nonresident producer qualifies on the strength of a current home-state license held in good standing, and the receiving state may not impose conditions beyond its fees.

The model act also protects people in transition. An applicant previously licensed for the same lines in another state is exempt from pre-licensing education and the exam if they are currently licensed or apply within 90 days of the old license's cancellation, with the prior state certifying good standing, and a producer who moves states applies within 90 days of establishing legal residence (model act, Section 9^[1]).

Keeping the license active

Property and casualty licenses typically run two-year terms, with continuing education (CE) due at renewal. Texas requires 24 hours of CE every two years, including 3 hours of ethics (Pearson VUE Texas handbook^[10]). Nebraska requires the same 24 hours and adds a rule specific to this license: resident property and casualty licensees must complete a one-time 3-hour course on the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) before they may sell flood insurance (Nebraska Department of Insurance^[20]).

How six states compare

The table below compares what a property and casualty license requires in Texas, California, Florida, New York, Georgia, and Illinois: the pre-licensing hours, the exam vendor each state contracts, and the exam fee.

Sources: Texas Department of Insurance^[6], Pearson VUE Texas handbook^[10], Cal. Ins. Code § 1749^[9], California Department of Insurance^[15], Florida DFS^[7], N.Y. Ins. Law § 2103^[19], PSI New York bulletin, Georgia rules 120-2-3^[8], Georgia Pearson VUE handbook^[21], 215 ILCS 5/500-30, NIPR Illinois^[18], Illinois DOI FAQ^[13].

Getting started

Work the steps in order, starting from your own state's rules:

1. Look up your state's requirements on its insurance department website or through NIPR's application guide^[5], and confirm whether pre-licensing education is required and how many hours.
2. Enroll in an approved course if your state requires one, or skip straight to self-study where it does not.
3. Download the candidate handbook and exam content outline from your state's testing vendor, and build a study schedule around the topic weights.
4. Schedule the exam, leaving room for the fingerprint appointment.
5. After passing, file the application within your state's window, then line up your first carrier appointment.

The single most useful document at every step is your state's candidate handbook: it lists the fees, the content outline, and the exact process for your state.