Delaware P&C Insurance Exam 2026

Property and Casualty in Delaware — Two Exams, One Fee Day

Delaware has no combined Property & Casualty examination. Pearson VUE's Delaware content outlines carry a Property exam and a Casualty exam and nothing that merges them, and 18 Del. C. §1707(a) lists Property and Casualty as separate lines of authority. Anyone selling you "Delaware P&C exam prep" is preparing you for two exams.

The same-day concession makes that far less painful than it sounds. The handbook: "Candidates scheduling more than one (major line) exam in the same day will pay only one examination fee (excluding Personal Lines)." Property and Casualty booked for the same day cost $90 between them, and both lines then sit on one $125 producer licence.

The alternative worth weighing is Personal Lines — a single 115-question exam covering household property and auto. It is one exam instead of two, but it is also the only major line excluded from the fee concession, so it costs its own $90. If your book will include commercial risks, the two-exam route is both broader and, at the test centre, no more expensive.

Delaware's regulator is worth knowing for the state portions of both exams: the Insurance Commissioner is elected by Delaware voters to a four-year term rather than appointed. Few states do that, and it appears on the paper.

Exam Options & Format

Each exam runs in two portions. Property: General Knowledge 50 scored (+5 pretest), State Specific 35 scored (+7). Casualty: General Knowledge 50 scored (+5), State Specific 45 scored (+9). Together, 180 scored questions and 199 items delivered.

Note the asymmetry in the state portions — Property's 35 is the lightest Delaware-specific load of any major line, Casualty's 45 the heaviest of the four. If you are sequencing across two days rather than one, Property is the gentler start.

Scoring is scaled from 0 to 100, not a raw percentage, with a cut of 70 on some exams and 80 on others that the Department does not publish. Prepare for 80. Retakes work portion by portion, with one year from passing the first portion to clear the other; the Accident & Health guide covers results in full.

Time limits are not published in the handbook body or the content outlines — they sit on the handbook's back cover, which is not in the machine-readable text. Check there before committing to a two-exam day.

Most Tested Topics Across the Delaware P&C Exams

The material spanning both exams sits in the guaranty association, the regulator and the renewal regime you are about to live under. Delaware's P&C guaranty fund is unusually generous in two places:

The guaranty numbers reward precision because Delaware is more generous than the states most study material describes, in two specific ways. The cap is $500,000 per claimant, not the $300,000 several states use — and workers' compensation claims are paid in full, outside the cap entirely. Add the fact that Delaware applies no per-claim deductible, where states like California subtract $100 from every claim, and you have three points that all cut the same way. A candidate answering from a generic outline will understate all three.

The elected Commissioner is the other reliable item. Most states appoint their insurance regulator; Delaware's voters elect one to a four-year term under §301. And note the asymmetric sales-inducement rule: using the guaranty association as a selling point is prohibited on the property and casualty side under §4419, while the life and health act carves that section out. The intuitive "never mention it" answer is wrong for one half of the market.

Nonresident Licensing and Reciprocity

Delaware is a genuinely reciprocal state, and its statute uses mandatory language rather than permissive. Section 1717: "The Insurance Commissioner shall waive any requirements for a nonresident license applicant with a valid license from the applicant's home state, except the requirements imposed by §1708 of this title, if the applicant's home state awards nonresident licenses to residents of this State on the same basis." Shall, not may.

What §1708 still requires, since it is the carve-out from that waiver: you must be currently licensed and in good standing in your home state, submit the request — either your home state's application or the NAIC Uniform Application — pay the fee, and appoint an agent for service of process. Your status is verified through the NAIC databases rather than by paperwork you supply.

Continuing education travels with you. Nonresident producers are exempt from Delaware CE and comply through their home state instead, where reciprocity exists. There is one exception worth flagging because it catches people: a nonresident adjuster whose home state has no CE requirement must meet Delaware's. The reciprocity only works if there is something on the other side to reciprocate with.

The same logic applies to examinations for adjusters. A nonresident adjuster whose home state has no adjuster examination requirement must take Delaware's exam. Again — Delaware defers to your home state's standard, but not to the absence of one.

Canadian residents may not obtain reciprocity for a nonresident adjuster licence without first designating another state as their home state.

If you are actually moving here, that is a different provision. Section 1709 gives a producer, adjuster or appraiser licensed in another state who moves to Delaware a 90-day window from establishing legal residence to apply, carrying their prior lines across without pre-licensing or examination. The Personal Lines guide covers §1709's exemptions in full — including the parallel 90-day route for someone whose out-of-state licence has been cancelled, and the definitive absence of any professional-designation waiver in Delaware.

A practical note on fees. The nonresident producer licence costs the same $125 as a resident one. But remember the renewal calendar difference: nonresident licences renew in ODD-numbered years, residents in even ones — so a producer who converts from nonresident to resident, or vice versa, moves between renewal cycles. Check which cycle you are on after any change of home state.

And one security note. The Department's most recent producer bulletin, No. 41 of 15 April 2026, concerns phishing emails impersonating NIPR. Delaware routes all licensing through NIPR, which makes its licensees a natural target. Reach NIPR by typing nipr.com yourself rather than following a link in an email about your licence.

Renewal — A Fixed Date, Alternating Years, and an Expensive Lapse

Delaware does not renew on your birthday or on the anniversary of your licence. It renews on 28 February — a fixed calendar date shared by every licensee in the state. That alone puts Delaware in a minority of states, and it makes the deadline easy to diary and easy to forget for exactly the same reason: nothing about your own dates will remind you.

And the year alternates by residency. Resident licences renew by 28 February of EVEN-numbered years. Nonresident licences renew by 28 February of ODD-numbered years. The Department's most recent resident cycle ran to 28 February 2026, with renewals accepted from 1 December 2025. On that pattern the next deadlines are 28 February 2027 for nonresidents and 29 February 2028 for residents — those two dates are our arithmetic from the confirmed cycle, not figures the Department has published, so treat them as a planning aid and confirm nearer the time.

The window opens about 1 December. You get roughly three months. The Department's renewal notice is explicit that renewals could not be submitted before 1 December in the last cycle.

The fee is $125 for a producer, adjuster, public adjuster, appraiser, fraternal producer, self-service storage producer or limited lines producer. A surplus lines broker renews at $275, a bail producer at $225.

A quiet gift for new licensees. Applicants licensed in the 90 days before the deadline — 1 December to 28 February — are exempt from that renewal period's fee. Get licensed in January and you do not pay a renewal fee the following month. It is worth knowing simply so you do not panic when a renewal notice arrives weeks after you were licensed.

Continuing education gates the renewal, and it is not a soft gate. The Department's notice: "the license will not be renewed unless the renewal fee is received and all continuing education credits have been met." Section 1718 goes further — failure to provide proof of meeting CE requirements "shall result in the automatic lapse of such licensee's license." Automatic. No notice period, no hearing.

If you miss the date, the cost escalates in two stages. Section 1707(g) provides a first six-month grace period carrying a penalty of DOUBLE the unpaid renewal fee — so $250 rather than $125. Months seven to twelve carry civil fines of $200 to $1,000 on top. And then the cliff: within 12 months of a lapse you may reapply "without the necessity of passing a written examination"; after 12 months, re-examination is required.

Read that last sentence twice if you have let a licence go. Twelve months is the line between a fee problem and sitting 180 questions again. Regulation 504 says the same thing from the other direction: a licensee suspended for twelve months or more must "complete all licensing requirements under 18 Del.C. §1706 including the retaking of exams."

There is a waiver route. Section 1707(h) allows the Commissioner to waive renewal procedures for military service or other extenuating circumstances. If something genuinely prevented a timely renewal, ask rather than assuming the ladder above is automatic.

Continuing education, in detail. Resident producers need 24 credit hours per biennium, three of them ethics (18 Del. Admin. C. §504). Resident adjusters, public adjusters and fraternal agents need 12, also including 3 ethics. The compliance date is the same last day of February of an even-numbered year, with the biennium running from 1 March. Holding multiple lines does not increase the requirement.

Carryover is capped at 5 credits into the next biennium and never applies to the ethics hours. Exempt from CE altogether: all nonresident producers, surplus lines brokers and fraternal producers; limited lines producers (consumer credit, title, crop/hail, surety, car rental); and resident adjusters licensed solely for fidelity and surety or marine and transportation. The Department's CE FAQ also describes an automatic 12-credit exemption for individuals licensed 25 years or more, with ethics still required — that appears in the FAQ rather than in the regulation text.

And the penalties for getting CE wrong are steep. Regulation 504 provides for penalties up to a $2,000 fine and suspension of the licence for one year for non-compliance — and up to $15,000 and permanent revocation for supplying false continuing education information. The gap between those two numbers is the Department telling you something: falling short is a problem, and lying about it is a different category of problem entirely.

Appointments are separate and largely painless. An appointment costs $50 one-time per insurer and is permanent unless cancelled — there is no annual appointment renewal in Delaware. The insurer must file within 15 days of executing your contract or of the first application you submit to them.

What It Costs

About $300 for both lines sat the same day: $90 once for the pair, roughly $85 for the combined state and FBI criminal history report, and $125 for the producer licence through NIPR, plus NIPR's transaction fee. Sat on separate days, add a second $90; added months later, add $50 for the additional line of authority.

Ongoing, the licence renews at $125 every two years on the fixed 28 February deadline — rising to $250 if you renew inside the first six months late, plus civil fines of $200 to $1,000 in months seven to twelve. Appointments are $50 one-time per insurer, permanent unless cancelled.

If you move into surplus lines, the step up is real: an active Delaware P&C producer licence first, then a separate Surplus Lines Broker licence at $275 initial and $275 to renew.

Eligibility Requirements

Minimum age 18, a Delaware address for resident applicants, and no active Delaware nonresident licence held at the same time. Both lines go on one application and through one criminal history check.

No pre-licensing education is required of anyone in Delaware. If you have held Property or Casualty authority in another state, check §1709's exemptions in the Personal Lines guide before booking anything — you may not need the exams at all.

The CE Requirement Itself

24 credit hours per biennium, three of them ethics, for resident producers — a flat total that does not scale with the number of lines you hold. The cycle runs 1 March to the last day of February of an even-numbered year, which is also your renewal deadline.

For a P&C book the one product requirement that may apply is flood: producers writing under the National Flood Insurance Program owe a 2-hour flood course each biennium. The annuity and long-term care requirements attach to the life and health lines.

Everything else — carryover, exemptions, the penalty structure and what happens after twelve months of lapse — is covered in the renewal section above, because in Delaware continuing education and renewal are the same conversation: no CE, no renewal, automatic lapse.

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