What This License Is
An Alabama Casualty license covers legal liability and the coverages built on it — general liability, commercial and personal auto liability, professional liability, umbrella and workers' compensation.
Alabama offers Casualty as a standalone line and also inside the combined Property & Casualty exam. Almost everyone takes the combination: ALDOI's 2025 report shows 9 standalone Casualty exams given against 1,800 combined P&C papers. Standalone Casualty makes sense for a producer working purely commercial liability and comp, but it does not reach physical-damage property coverage, and it does not include Personal Lines, which is a separate line with its own exam in Alabama.
One prerequisite worth flagging early: a surplus line broker license requires a resident producer license carrying property and casualty authority, plus a high school diploma and three years of recent full-time P&C experience (Reg 36). Casualty alone will not get you there — you need the Property side too.
Exam Options & Format
The Casualty exam is 125 questions in 2 hours 30 minutes, and 87 correct answers pass — the same 69.6% rounding-in-your-favor that applies to the Life paper. Raw scoring, no scaling, no series number.
The section split is unusual: 28 questions of P&C fundamentals, 15 of personal lines, 66 of commercial lines, and 16 of Alabama insurance law. That 66-question commercial block is the heaviest of any Alabama producer exam — over half the paper — so a candidate whose experience is personal-lines heavy will find this the harder of the two singles despite the identical fee.
Volume is thin enough that pass rates carry little signal: ALDOI recorded 6 first-time Casualty candidates in 2025, of whom 3 passed. The number that matters for planning is the combined P&C paper at 56% first-time, the lowest of Alabama's two high-volume producer exams. Whichever you sit, you can do it in a classroom or online through ProctorU for the same $50.
Most Tested Topics on the Alabama Casualty Exam
Two systems carry the Alabama weight here: motor-vehicle liability, where the state's negligence doctrine is genuinely extreme, and workers' compensation, where the coverage threshold is one of the highest in the country.
| Concept | The Alabama rule |
|---|---|
| Negligence doctrine | ⭐ CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE — any fault at all, even 1%, bars all recovery. Alabama common law |
| Auto minimum limits | 25/50/25 — $25,000 per person, $50,000 per accident, $25,000 property damage (Ala. Code § 32-7-6) |
| Fault system | Tort. Alabama is not a no-fault state and has no mandatory PIP |
| Uninsured motorist | Must be offered; included unless the insured rejects it in writing (§ 32-7-23) |
| Underinsured motorist | Same treatment — offered, rejectable in writing |
| Residual auto market | The Alabama Automobile Insurance Plan (ALAIP), the assigned-risk plan in operation since 1948 (§ 27-23-24) |
| Workers' comp threshold | ⭐ Five or more employees — including part-timers, corporate officers and LLC members (§ 25-5-1 et seq.) |
| Comp wage replacement | 66⅔% of average weekly earnings at the time of injury (§ 25-5-57(a)(1)) |
| Comp maximum and minimum | 100% and 27½% of the state average weekly wage, reset each 1 July (§ 25-5-68) |
| Comp claim deadline | 2 years from the accident (§ 25-5-80) |
| Comp compliance | Insure with a licensed carrier, qualify as an individual self-insurer, or join a group self-insurance fund |
| Producer recordkeeping | 3 years — 2 for limited lines credit business (§ 27-7-33) |
Contributory negligence is the single highest-value fact on this exam and the one national prep will get wrong for you. Almost every state has moved to comparative fault, where a claimant 30% at fault recovers 70%. Alabama has not. Under Alabama common law any contributory fault by the claimant — one percent — is a complete bar to recovery. If an answer choice offers proportional reduction, or a 50% or 51% bar, it is describing another state. Alabama sits with a small handful of jurisdictions at the strictest end.
The workers' compensation threshold is the second. Alabama requires coverage only of employers with five or more employees, counting part-time workers, corporate officers and LLC members. Most states set the bar at one, two or three, so an Alabama question about a four-employee shop has "not required" as its answer where the national reflex says otherwise.
On the benefit formula, know the shape rather than the dollars: 66⅔% of average weekly earnings, bounded by a maximum of 100% and a minimum of 27½% of the state average weekly wage. Those bounds are recalculated by the Department of Labor each 1 July, so the dollar figures move annually and no fixed amount is worth memorizing.
Fingerprinting in Alabama — Fieldprint Only, and a 30-Day Clock
Alabama's background check has two features that catch producers licensed elsewhere: there is exactly one acceptable vendor, and the results expire in 30 days. Get either wrong and you pay to be printed twice.
Who has to do it. Ala. Code § 27-7-4.4 requires a criminal history check for every initial resident producer applicant, and again when adding a new line of authority where no check has previously been obtained. Limited lines producers are exempt. The statute addresses only initial resident applicants and does not expressly speak to nonresidents — in practice nonresidents licensed in a home state are not printed here, but the statute does not say so in terms, so confirm with ALDOI if you are in that position.
Fieldprint, and only Fieldprint. ALDOI states it flatly: the Department "can only utilize fingerprints processed through Fieldprint." Prints taken at a police station, at another employer's vendor, or through Fieldprint for a different purpose will all be rejected. You go directly to fieldprintalabama.com — there is no state-issued service code, ORI or reason code to obtain first, and none is published anywhere in ALDOI's material. Alabama runs on Livescan, captured electronically and transmitted to the state, rather than the mailed ink cards some states still use, and the check runs against both the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency and the FBI. Two practical rules from the vendor: an appointment is required and walk-ins are not accepted, and you cannot self-enrol out of curiosity — the programme is open only to people "asked by one of the participating Alabama agencies to be fingerprinted," which is what your ALDOI application makes you.
What it costs: $49.20. That figure comes from Fieldprint's own Alabama site, which answers it directly in its FAQ — and it is the only place you will find it. § 27-7-4.4 makes the fee payable by the applicant directly to the contractor, and provides that the contractor collects both its own charge and the criminal-history-check fees, but neither ALDOI's fingerprinting page, nor its fee schedule, nor the statute discloses an amount. Because the vendor sets it rather than the state, treat $49.20 as current-as-checked rather than fixed by law.
⭐ The order of operations, which is the reverse of many states. ALDOI's instruction is explicit: applicants should "seek to get fingerprinted after passing the state exam and one day before applying for the license." So the sequence is: pass the exam → wait 3 to 5 business days for the result to post → get fingerprinted → file the NIPR application immediately. Fingerprinting is not a pre-exam step and not a post-application step.
And the 30-day cliff. ALDOI: "The fingerprint results will remain in our system only 30 days after you are fingerprinted. If the application reaches the DOI after those 30 days you will have to get fingerprinted again" — and pay again. This is why the Department tells you to print roughly a day before applying rather than getting it out of the way early. Book the appointment when your NIPR application is ready to go, not when you first pass.
One more document. Separately from the prints, ALDOI requires proof of citizenship, with a 10-day deadline once requested, and states that "your license will not be issued until this documentation is received." The [Life guide](/insurance/alabama/life-only/licensing-guide) walks the full application sequence.
What It Costs
$50 for the Casualty exam, $80 to ALDOI, $5 to NIPR. The license fee does not vary with the number of lines you select on a single application, so adding Property at the same time costs nothing extra in state fees — though it does mean a second $50 exam unless you take the combined paper.
The Fieldprint fee is $49.20, and it is worth knowing before you commit, because letting the 30-day window lapse means paying it twice. ALDOI publishes no figure of its own — this one comes from the vendor, so it can move without a rule change.
Eligibility Requirements
18 or older (§ 27-7-5(a)(1)), a passing exam score, a clean Fieldprint check, and proof of citizenship. Alabama has required no pre-licensing education from any producer applicant since 1 January 2024.
The background standard itself is worth understanding before you apply rather than after. Alabama's character requirements reach fraud, felonies and prior out-of-state license denials, and Ala. Code § 27-7-4.4's check covers both state and federal records. If your history includes anything disclosable, gather the documentation before you file — the 30-day fingerprint window leaves no room to go looking for court records mid-application.
Keeping Your Casualty License Active
Important CE details: 24 credit hours per biennial renewal period, of which 3 must be insurance producer ethics (Rule 482-1-110-.05(1)). A credit hour is at least 50 minutes. There are NO line-specific splits — any approved course counts regardless of the license you hold — and NO carryover: excess hours are lost at the end of the period.
24 credit hours per biennial period, 3 of them insurance producer ethics. A credit hour means at least 50 minutes. Alabama applies no line-specific split and permits no carryover — excess hours are lost, a rule in force since 1 January 2013 — and no course may be counted twice inside one reporting period.
Alabama also exempts a real list of people from CE entirely, and one entry surprises producers: holders of CPCU, CIC, CLU, ChFC, CFP, RHU, REBC, CHC or ARM are exempt from continuing education. Note carefully that this waives CE only — no designation waives the licensing exam. The [P&C guide](/insurance/alabama/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide) covers the exemptions and the renewal calendar in detail.
Quick Reference
Official Links
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