What the Delaware Casualty License Covers
Casualty is its own line of authority in Delaware under 18 Del. C. §1707(a), covering liability risks — auto, general liability, workers' compensation, professional liability and umbrella.
It is genuinely standalone. Delaware publishes no combined Property & Casualty exam: Pearson VUE's Delaware content outlines contain a Property exam and a Casualty exam and nothing that merges them, and the Insurance Code lists Property and Casualty as separate lines. A producer wanting both sits both exams — though the same-day fee concession means the second one is free at the test centre.
Two features of Delaware casualty law shape the state portion of the exam more than anything else. Delaware is a tort state that nonetheless mandates PIP — an 'add-on' jurisdiction, and one of relatively few. And its workers' compensation scheme has no employee-count threshold at all, which catches out producers used to states that exempt the smallest employers.
The narrower alternative, if your book will be households rather than businesses, is Personal Lines — a separate Delaware line with its own exam, and the one exam excluded from the same-day fee deal.
Exam Options & Format
The Casualty examination runs in two portions: General Knowledge, 50 scored plus 5 pretest, and State Specific, 45 scored plus 9 pretest. Ninety-five scored questions in total, 109 items delivered — the largest state portion of any Delaware major line except Personal Lines.
Scoring is scaled, 0 to 100, with a cut of 70 on some exams and 80 on others that Delaware does not map publicly. Do not plan against a percentage; plan against 80. The Accident & Health guide covers scoring, portion retakes and score validity in full.
Time limits are not published in any primary Delaware source. The handbook places them on its back cover, which is not in the document's machine-readable text, and the content outlines carry none. Check the back cover of the current handbook when you book rather than relying on a figure from anywhere else.
The $90 fee is charged once for multiple major lines sat the same day. For a candidate building a P&C book that is a straightforward $90 saving — Property and Casualty on one morning, one fee.
Most Tested Topics on the Delaware Casualty Exam
Forty-five of your ninety-five scored questions are Delaware law. The state's auto and workers' compensation regimes are both unusual, and both are verified below against the Code:
| Concept | The Delaware rule |
|---|---|
| Fault system | Fault-based (tort) WITH mandatory no-fault PIP added on — an 'add-on' state, not a true no-fault one (21 Del. C. §2118) |
| Auto liability minimums | 25/50/10 — $25,000 per person, $50,000 per occurrence, $10,000 property damage (§2118) |
| PIP — mandatory | $15,000 per person / $30,000 per accident, plus a $5,000 funeral benefit, paying medical expenses and lost earnings regardless of fault (§2118(a)(2)) |
| Uninsured motorist | Mandatory unless rejected in writing, provided at the financial-responsibility limits; UM property damage carries a $250 deductible (18 Del. C. §3902) |
| Underinsured motorist | Offered with UM, up to $100,000/$300,000, rejectable in writing (§3902) |
| Negligence doctrine | Modified comparative — a 51% bar. A claimant recovers only if their negligence was not greater than the defendant's; at exactly 50% they still recover (10 Del. C. §8132) |
| Residual auto market | The Delaware Automobile Insurance Plan — the assigned-risk market |
| Workers' comp mandate | Mandatory, and the exclusive remedy against the employer (19 Del. C. §2304) |
| Workers' comp threshold | No employee-count threshold — essentially every employer with an employee is covered, with narrow exceptions for casual and domestic workers, farm labourers, and electing sole proprietors, partners and officers |
| Temporary total disability | 66⅔% of the average weekly wage, capped at 66⅔% of the statewide average weekly wage (§2324) |
| Notice and filing | Notice to the employer within 90 days; a claim filed within 2 years of the accident; occupational disease 1 year from knowledge; reopening within 5 years of the last payment (§§2341, 2361) |
| Compliance options | Insure with a licensed carrier, or qualify as an approved self-insurer (§2372) |
The $10,000 property damage minimum is the number to overwrite, because it is genuinely low — most states now sit at $15,000 or $25,000, and a candidate reciting 25/50/25 from a neighbouring state's material gets it wrong. Pair it with the mandatory PIP figures: Delaware is a tort state, so the reflex 'tort means no PIP' fails here, and $15,000/$30,000 plus a $5,000 funeral benefit applies whether or not anyone was at fault.
On the liability side, note where Delaware's bar sits. Section 8132 bars a claimant whose negligence was greater than the defendant's — so at exactly 50/50 the claimant still recovers. That is the opposite outcome from a state like Arkansas, whose bar catches a claimant 'equal to or greater than'. Fact patterns landing on a precise 50% split exist to test exactly that word.
And on workers' compensation, the memorable fact is an absence: no threshold. There is no 'three or more employees' or 'five or more' in Delaware. One employee, and the duty attaches.
The Delaware Background Check — Fingerprints, Both Reports, and a Conflict
Delaware's background requirement is more demanding than most, and it is the step where applications stall. Section 1706 requires applicants to "submit fingerprints and other necessary information to the State Bureau of Identification" for both a state and a federal (FBI) criminal history report — and the statute puts the cost on you.
Both reports. Not one. The Department's Licensing Procedures and NIPR's Delaware page agree on this, as does the statute. A state-only report is not sufficient, and ordering one is a common and expensive mistake.
How to book it. Fingerprinting is scheduled through IdentoGO at uenroll.identogo.com. Delaware State Police's own guidance is that "the agency, entity, or organization requiring you to get fingerprinted should have provided you a service code" — and the Department's Licensing Procedures publishes that code as 27S46Z, described as requesting "a personal State and FBI criminal history report." Worth knowing the provenance: that code appears in the Department's document and is not among the example codes DSP lists on its own page, so if IdentoGO does not recognise it, call the Department rather than guessing at an alternative.
What it costs. Delaware State Police publishes three tiers: State Criminal History $72, State AND Federal Criminal History $85, and Fingerprint Card only $30. Since the Department requires both reports, the $85 tier is the one that matches — though DSP does not itself tie a price to service code 27S46Z, so treat $85 as the expected figure and confirm it at registration.
Where to go. Nine fingerprint locations serve the whole state: Wilmington, Newark (two sites), Middletown, Dover (two sites), Milford, Georgetown and Seaford. For a state this size that is genuinely convenient — no Delaware resident is far from one.
The 90-day freshness rule. Both the Department's Licensing Procedures and NIPR state that the reports must be dated within 90 days of receipt. This is the constraint that makes sequencing matter: get printed too early, let the application drift, and you pay again. Ninety days is not long once you factor in processing and any document requests.
And here is the conflict you should know about. Delaware's two current primary sources describe the handoff differently, and they cannot both be right:
The Department's Licensing Procedures (June 2025) presents the check as a prerequisite and says the State Police "will send the criminal history reports directly to our department." Pearson VUE's Candidate Handbook (also June 2025) says the opposite sequence: "Once the application has been submitted through NIPR, please fax the State Criminal Background Report to: 302-736-7906." One has you obtaining the report first and the police routing it; the other has you applying first and self-transmitting by fax. The controlling document — Producers & Adjusters Bulletin No. 22, revised 23 June 2017 — is published as a scanned image with no readable text.
The safe sequence, and the one call worth making. Pass the exam, book IdentoGO with code 27S46Z and obtain both reports, file the NIPR application, and then confirm with the Department that the reports reached them — licensing@delaware.gov or (302) 674-7390. Confirming takes a few minutes and removes the only genuine ambiguity in Delaware's process.
On disclosure. A criminal record is not an automatic bar, but the application's background questions are where applications are actually lost. Answer them completely and attach the supporting documents. A matter you disclose is one the Department evaluates; a matter that surfaces in an FBI report you did not mention is a misrepresentation, and that is an independent ground for refusal quite apart from the underlying conduct.
What It Costs
About $300 on a first-time pass: $90 for the exam, roughly $85 for the combined state and FBI criminal history report, and $125 for the licence through NIPR, plus NIPR's transaction fee.
Delaware's real saving is structural rather than a discount — there is no pre-licensing course, so nothing sits between the fees above and a licence. And if you take Property on the same day, the second exam costs nothing and the second line of authority is $50, making a full P&C book roughly $350 rather than the $600 the same pair would cost in a state charging per licence.
Eligibility Requirements
Minimum age 18, a Delaware address for resident applicants, and no active Delaware nonresident licence held simultaneously. No pre-licensing education, no experience requirement, no sponsorship.
The substantive gate is the background check above. Everything else in Delaware's process is paperwork that moves in 24 to 48 hours once the file is complete.
Keeping Your License Active
Important CE details: Supplying false continuing education information is treated far more seriously than falling short: Regulation 504 provides for up to a $15,000 fine and permanent revocation, against up to $2,000 and a one-year suspension for ordinary non-compliance.
24 credit hours per biennium including 3 hours of ethics for resident producers (18 Del. Admin. C. §504), on a cycle running 1 March to the last day of February of an even-numbered year. Holding Casualty alongside Property or any other line does not increase the total.
Casualty producers carry no line-specific training gate of the kind Life carries for annuities. If you also write flood under the NFIP, that is a separate 2-hour course each biennium.
Two consequences worth keeping in view. A licence may not be renewed until CE is satisfied, and §1718 provides that failure to prove compliance results in automatic lapse. And a licence suspended for twelve months or more sends you back to §1706 in full — including the retaking of exams. The P&C guide covers renewal and reinstatement.
Quick Reference
Official Links
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