Colorado Casualty Study Guide

Colorado’s casualty exam carries the largest state-specific section of any producer exam in the state — thirty-one scored questions — and it draws them from two bodies of law with opposite personalities. Auto is where Colorado is protective: coverages the insured did not knowingly decline get read back into the policy. Workers’ compensation is where Colorado is procedural: short deadlines, precise fractions, and one number that quietly doubled in 2022.

Auto — a tort state that reads coverage back in

Colorado is fault-based (tort). Its no-fault Auto Accident Reparations Act was not repealed by a bill; it was allowed to sunset, expiring July 1, 2003. So there is no PIP in Colorado. Minimum liability limits are 25/50/15 — $25,000 bodily injury per person, $50,000 per accident, $15,000 property damage — unchanged since that same year.

Now the protective streak. Medical payments coverage must be offered at $5,000 (§ 10-4-635(1)(a)), and may be declined only in writing (subsection (1)(b)). If the insurer never offered it, or cannot produce proof of a written rejection, subsection (1)(c) says the policy “shall be presumed to include medical payments coverage with benefits of five thousand dollars.” The coverage arrives by operation of law.

Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage must be offered at limits equal to the insured’s own bodily injury liability limits, again rejectable only in writing. And § 10-4-609(1)(c) adds Colorado’s most distinctive auto sentence: UM/UIM “shall not be reduced by a setoff from any other coverage, including, but not limited to, legal liability insurance, medical payments coverage, health insurance, or other uninsured or underinsured motor vehicle insurance.” Many states let the carrier subtract what the insured collected elsewhere. Colorado forbids it by name.

Cancelling an auto policy — the sixty-day switch

Colorado gives an auto insurer a free hand for the first sixty days and then closes the door. Once a personal auto policy has been in effect sixty days — or is a renewal — § 10-4-602 permits cancellation only for: nonpayment of premium; suspension or revocation of a driver’s licence or registration; a knowingly false statement on the application; or a knowingly and wilfully false material statement on a claim. Four grounds, and no others.

The notice periods differ from the property side. Thirty days to cancel for a permitted cause, ten days for nonpayment, and thirty days to nonrenew. On nonrenewal the reason need not appear in the notice — but the insurer must supply it within twenty days of the insured’s written request.

Comparative negligence — a 50% bar, not 51%

C.R.S. § 13-21-111 lets a claimant recover only where their negligence “was not as great as the negligence of the person against whom recovery is sought.” Read that literally: at an even 50/50 split the claimant recovers nothing, because equal is “as great as.”

Some material describes Colorado as a “51% bar” state. That phrase describes a different rule — one where the claimant recovers at exactly fifty percent — and on the 50/50 fact pattern examiners prefer, it will take you to the wrong answer.

Workers’ compensation — the deadline that changed

Colorado is competitive, not monopolistic. Pinnacol Assurance is, by statute, “a political subdivision of the state” that “shall not be an agency of state government,” and which “shall not refuse to insure any Colorado employer” because of the risk of loss or the amount of premium (§ 8-45-101). That guaranteed-issue duty is what makes it function as the market of last resort — though the statute never uses that phrase. Employers may instead insure with any licensed carrier or qualify as an approved self-insurer. Coverage is required of any employer with one or more persons engaged in its business (§ 8-40-203(1)(b)).

The numbers to hold:

Notice to the employer: ten days. An injured employee must notify the employer in writing within ten days of the injury, on pain of losing up to one day’s compensation for each day of delay. This is the single most out-of-date fact in circulation about Colorado workers’ compensation — the rule was four days for decades, and HB22-1112 raised it to ten effective August 10, 2022. A great deal of study material never caught up.

Filing the claim: two years, extendable to three where a reasonable excuse is established and the employer’s rights have not been prejudiced (§ 8-43-103(2)).

Waiting period: three days. If disability does not last longer than three days, no indemnity is payable — though medical benefits still are. If disability runs longer than two weeks, indemnity is paid retroactively from the day the employee left work. Note the statute says “three days”; the word “shifts,” which appears in some summaries, is not in it.

Temporary total disability: sixty-six and two-thirds percent of the average weekly wage, capped at ninety-one percent of the state average weekly wage.

Surplus lines — and the number that changed in 2026

When the admitted market will not take a risk, a Colorado producer with surplus lines authority may place it with a nonadmitted carrier — but only “after diligent effort has been made” to place it with admitted insurers (§ 10-5-103). The statute sets no number; Regulation 2-4-1 does, and the number changed on January 30, 2026, from “a minimum of three” admitted insurers to “more than one.”

Two other rules travel with it. The ten percent affordability standard is older than the 2026 amendment and sits in the statute at § 10-5-103(1)(b): you may not go non-admitted merely to secure a lower rate unless the admitted quote is more than ten percent higher for comparable coverage. And the policy must carry a bold declarations-page disclosure that the insurer is not licensed in Colorado. The premium tax is three percent, plus a 0.175% SLIP+ transaction fee on policies effective on or after January 1, 2025.

Say the consequence out loud to the client, because it is the real point: a nonadmitted carrier is not backed by the Colorado Insurance Guaranty Association. If it fails, the fund that would have paid up to $300,000 on an admitted policy simply is not there.