Alabama Personal Lines Study Guide

Personal Lines carries 22 of its 100 questions on Alabama law — the highest state-law share of any producer exam in the state — and it posts the lowest first-time pass rate, at 52%. Those two facts are not a coincidence. Most of that 22-question block lives in one area: what an insurer may do to a policy mid-term, and what warning it owes first. Alabama’s answer is detailed on auto and nearly silent on homeowners.

Auto cancellation — 60, 20, 10

Three numbers carry the auto side.

The first 60 days are different. Ala. Code § 27-23-21(b) provides that the statutory list of permitted cancellation reasons does not apply to an auto liability policy in force less than 60 days. Inside that window the insurer has materially more freedom.

After that, cancellation takes 20 days’ notice before the effective date (§ 27-23-23) — for any permitted cause.

Nonpayment of premium takes 10 days, and the notice must be accompanied by the reason.

The reason — on request, not automatically

Alabama’s approach to explaining a cancellation is unusual and worth reading carefully. Outside the nonpayment case, the reason is supplied on request. If the notice does not include it, the notice must state that the insurer will supply the reason on written request — and the insured may ask in writing not less than 15 days before the effective date (§ 27-23-23; Act 2012-510).

So the sequence is: notice goes out → insured asks in writing → reason is supplied. Compare that with the states that require the reason to appear in the notice itself, and you have the distinction the exam is probing.

Nonrenewal — and where Alabama simply stops

This is the highest-value item on the paper because it is an absence, and absences are hard to study for.

Auto: Ala. Code § 27-23-28 says in terms that “nothing in this article shall apply to nonrenewal.” The cancellation article does not reach it.

Homeowners: there is no general statute requiring notice before nonrenewing an individual policy. The only binding rule is regulatory and it is about blocks: Ala. Admin. Code 482-1-136 requires 150 days’ notice to the Commissioner and 120 days’ notice to policyholders where an insurer restricts coverage or nonrenews “a category or group of existing insureds.” One homeowner, nonrenewed by themselves, is outside it.

Where ALDOI has acted against individual disaster-driven cancellations, it has done so by bulletin — Bulletin No. 2025-08, dated 4 February 2026 — rather than under a general notice statute.

The auto policy underneath it all

Every personal auto policy written in Alabama sits on 25/50/25 minimum liability limits (Ala. Code § 32-7-6), in a fault-based state with no mandatory PIP. Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage is included unless the insured rejects it in writing (§ 32-7-23) — offered, not mandatory, but not declinable by silence either. And Alabama’s contributory negligence rule means a claimant even one percent at fault recovers nothing at all, which shapes every liability conversation you will have with a personal-lines client.

Where the rest of the 22 questions live

Part IV is not only cancellation. ALDOI’s outline defines it as licensing, commissioner powers, producer appointments, continuing education, unfair trade practices, and the Domestic Abuse Insurance Protection Act (Title 27, Chapter 55) — a statute named explicitly in the outline that bars insurers from denying, cancelling, restricting or surcharging coverage on the basis of an insured’s abuse status. Expect at least one question from it.