Georgia Doesn't License Property by Itself — Here's What That Means
Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 120-2-3-.06(1)(c) lists Property as its own kind of license — "insurance coverage for the direct or consequential loss or damage to property of every kind" — and Pearson VUE prints a separate Property exam with its own code, 12-GA-03. Read those two facts alone and you would conclude Georgia sells a Property-only license. It doesn't.
OCI settles it in print, on its resident licensing page, under the Property and Casualty entry: "You must select both Property and Casualty when applying. We do not license just Property or just Casualty." The same page describes the education requirement as a "16-hour Property and Casualty prelicensing course" made up of "the individual Property course or the individual Casualty course which consist of 8.0 hours each." The halves exist. The half-license does not.
So what is 12-GA-03 for? It is one of two routes to the same destination. You may satisfy Georgia's examination requirement either by passing the combined Property & Casualty exam (12-GA-06) — 125 scored questions in two and a half hours — or by passing 12-GA-03 (Property) and 12-GA-04 (Casualty) as two separate 80-question sittings. Same license at the end, same $120 fee, same 16 hours of coursework. The only differences are the exam fee ($67 once versus $67 twice) and how much material you carry into a single room.
There is one genuine exception worth knowing, and it is not a loophole so much as a different animal: Property is separately issuable as a temporary line. OCI lists the eligible temporary agent lines as Life, Accident and Sickness, Property, Casualty, and Personal Lines. A temporary license under O.C.G.A. § 33-23-13 runs six months, renews in three-month increments to a fifteen-month ceiling, and exists for insurer-sponsored training or for winding up a deceased or disabled agent's book — not as a shortcut to permanent licensure.
If personal-lines property is genuinely all you plan to write — homeowners, dwelling fire, personal auto — look at Personal Lines (12-GA-55) instead. That one is a real standalone Georgia line of authority, with its own dedicated rule at 120-2-3-.14, an 8-hour course, and a single exam.
Exam Options & Format
12-GA-03, Property Agent: 80 scored questions plus 10 unscored pretest items, 2 hours, $67, and a flat 70% to pass — 56 of 80. Georgia scores raw, not scaled, and prints your pass/fail before you leave.
The scored breakdown from the content outline: Types of policies 22 · Insurance terms and related concepts 15 · Policy provisions and contract law 13 · Georgia laws pertinent to all insurance lines 22 · Georgia rules for property and casualty 6–7 · Georgia rules for property only 1–2. Note what that means: the all-lines Georgia chapter alone is worth as much as the entire types-of-policies section, and property-specific Georgia rules are worth barely one or two questions. Study Georgia's general insurance law, not obscure property trivia.
Splitting versus combining. The combined 12-GA-06 presents 125 scored questions in 150 minutes — 72 seconds each, against 90 seconds each on the split exams. It compresses the Georgia law block from about 30 questions to about 22 (18 all-lines, 3–4 P&C, 0–1 property-only, 3–4 casualty-only), so there is genuinely less state law to carry. Splitting costs an extra $67 and a second trip, and buys you a smaller surface area per sitting and an independent failure — bomb Casualty and your Property pass still stands, with its own 12-month clock.
Retake rules are the same either way: rebook the next day if you like, but wait 14 days after the first and second failures and 60 days after the third and beyond. No attempt cap. And under Rule 120-2-3-.09(3), a candidate who took pre-licensing through an independent provider and fails three times must retake the course from a different provider before retesting.
Most Tested Topics on the Georgia Property Exam
About 30 of the 80 scored questions are Georgia law, and property questions cluster around rate regulation, the residual market, and the surplus-lines path. From the TESTivity Georgia regulations curriculum, each verified against the code:
| Concept | The Georgia rule |
|---|---|
| Rate regulation | Split, not uniform. Minimum-limits private passenger auto is prior approval with a deemer: effective on approval or after 45 days with no disapproval, extendable by up to 55 more — § 33-9-21(b)(1). All other personal auto is file-and-use, effective 60 days after filing without approval — § 33-9-21(b)(2) |
| Standard fire policy | Fire policies must "conform as to all provisions and the sequence of the standard or uniform form prescribed by the Commissioner" — O.C.G.A. § 33-32-1(a); the form itself is Rule 120-2-19-.01 |
| FAIR Plan | Georgia has one. Chapter 33-33 is titled Fair Access to Insurance Requirements; the entity is the Georgia Underwriting Association — note the name is the association's own, not a statutory term |
| FAIR Plan membership | Mandatory — every insurer writing property insurance in Georgia "shall be required to become and remain a member of the plan" as a condition of its authority to transact property business — § 33-33-3 |
| Amount-of-insurance rule | For certain fire policies the amount of insurance is conclusive as to value — § 33-32-5 |
| Credit information | Permitted but fenced: an insurer may not score using income, gender, race, address, ZIP code, ethnic group, religion, marital status, or nationality, and may not deny, cancel or nonrenew solely on credit — § 33-24-91 |
| Surplus lines prerequisite | An active resident property, casualty and surety agent license, then a separate surplus lines broker license under § 33-23-37 (routed there by § 33-5-22), with a $50,000 bond and a competency exam |
| Diligent effort | Required before placing with a nonadmitted insurer — § 33-5-21(a)(3) — and waived for an exempt commercial purchaser who requests it in writing, § 33-5-21(b). Georgia sets no numeric count of declinations |
| Surplus lines tax | 4% of premium, remitted quarterly by the broker on the 15th of April, July, October and January — § 33-5-31 |
| Nonadmitted insurer vetting | The broker must ascertain the insurer's financial condition first and may not place with one below the capital-and-surplus floor — § 33-5-25 |
| Insolvency backstop | The Georgia Insurers Insolvency Pool — property and casualty only. Covered claims cap at the lesser of policy limits or $300,000; claims under $50 are excluded — § 33-36-3(4) |
The rate-regulation split is the highest-value item here, because almost every study aid flattens it. Georgia is not simply "prior approval" and not simply "file and use" — it is prior approval with a 45-day deemer for minimum-limits private passenger auto only, and file-and-use at 60 days for everything else in personal auto. A question that asks how a Georgia rate becomes effective is really asking whether you noticed which tier it named.
The FAIR Plan is the other one to get right, because older Georgia material flatly states the state has none and pushes high-risk property to surplus lines. That is wrong. Chapter 33-33 establishes the plan, § 33-33-3 makes membership a condition of doing property business in Georgia, and the Georgia Underwriting Association writes the coverage — building and personal property against fire, lightning, removal, windstorm, hail, explosion, riot, smoke, aircraft and vehicles, with vandalism and, in coastal areas, wind-only supplements available. It is designed as a last resort: narrower coverage at a higher premium than the standard market.
Georgia Test Centers and Scheduling — Every Detail
Georgia is an in-person testing state, full stop. Georgia Insurance does not appear on Pearson VUE's OnVUE remote-proctoring program list, the August 2026 handbook contains no remote-testing provision, and the Pearson VUE Georgia insurance page offers no online-proctored option. Three independent checks, all negative. If a competitor page tells you that you can take 12-GA-03 at your kitchen table, it is describing a different state or an older year.
Finding a center. The handbook deliberately does not print addresses — it says only that "a full list of available test sites can be found at www.pearsonvue.com," because the roster changes. Use the live locator at wsr.pearsonvue.com/testtaker/find/testcenter/GAINS, which returns current Georgia sites with addresses and directions. Metro Atlanta carries the most capacity by a wide margin; Savannah, Augusta, Columbus, Macon and Albany serve the rest of the state, and seats outside the metro fill further ahead. Check two or three sites before you assume nothing is open — a center forty minutes away often has a seat a week earlier.
Booking. Reserve online through the Pearson VUE Georgia insurance page or by phone at (800) 274-0488. Appointments can be made up to one calendar day before the date you want, subject to availability. Walk-in examinations are not available — the handbook says so in those words, and showing up hoping for a cancellation slot does not work.
Rescheduling and cancelling — the 48-hour line. Call Pearson VUE at (800) 274-0488 at least 48 hours before your appointment to change or cancel. Inside that window, or if you simply don't show, you forfeit the $67: the handbook is explicit that candidates "absent from or late to an exam who have not changed or canceled the reservation… will not be admitted to the exam and will forfeit the exam fee." With proper notice you can transfer the fee to a new date or request a refund. Exam fees are not otherwise refundable or transferable.
On the day. Arrive 30 minutes early — this is check-in time, not a suggestion, and late arrival is treated as a no-show. Bring two forms of current signature identification: the primary must be government-issued and photo-bearing with a signature, the secondary must carry a valid signature, and the name on both must match your registration exactly. Nothing personal comes into the testing room — the handbook's prohibited list runs "cellular phones, hand-held computers or other electronic devices, pagers, watches, wallets, purses, firearms or other weapons, hats, bags, coats, books, and/or notes, pens or pencils." The Life & Health guide covers check-in and security screening in full.
Two more numbers you will see. OCI's general licensing line publishes (800) 274-8969 while the handbook and Pearson VUE publish (800) 274-0488; both are live, but use the handbook number for anything to do with the exam itself. And your result is immediate — a printed pass or fail before you leave the building, with no waiting period and nothing to mail.
What It Costs
Exam: $67 per attempt. Splitting into 12-GA-03 and 12-GA-04 costs $134; the combined 12-GA-06 costs $67. Application: $120 to OCI through Sircon — $100 license + $15 application fee + $5 processing — and that figure does not change with the number of lines, because the fee attaches to the license.
So the fixed total is $254 on the split route or $187 combined, assuming first-time passes. On top: 16 hours of pre-licensing (8 Property + 8 Casualty) at whatever your provider charges — TESTivity recommends Achievable, an OCI-approved provider (disclosure: TESTivity has a partnership with Achievable and may earn a commission on enrollments through this page) — and the IdentoGO fingerprint fee, which Georgia does not publish for service code 2TGJ6B.
If you later add a surplus lines broker credential, budget separately: that requires its own exam (12-GA-50), a $50,000 bond, and a $600 license fee.
Eligibility Requirements
O.C.G.A. § 33-23-5(a): at least 18, "a resident of this state who shall reside and be present within this state for at least six months of every year," and "of good character." Georgia's residency test counts days present, not just a mailing address.
Pre-licensing is 16 hours for the P&C license — an 8-hour Property course and an 8-hour Casualty course under Rule 120-2-3-.07(3) — and the certificate is good for 12 months. Holders of CPCU, CIC, CISR or CRM are exempt from the courses under Rule 120-2-3-.07(5); CPCU alone also waives the examination under Rule 120-2-3-.09. The Accident & Sickness guide lays out which credentials sit on which list.
Everyone applying for a first Georgia license submits fingerprints and a notarized Citizenship Affidavit (GID-276-EN). The Casualty guide covers the fingerprint process; the Life guide covers the Sircon application.
Keeping the License Active
Important CE details: Governed by Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 120-2-3-.15, with filing deadlines at -.16 and reductions at -.19. Reductions and exemptions are claimed on Form GID-101E-AL; transcripts live in Sircon's Compliance Express.
Two-year term, expiring the last day of your birth month. 24 hours of CE per cycle including 3 ethics, dropping to 20 hours (3 ethics) at 20 years of licensure. Holding Property and Casualty authority together does not double anything — Georgia's requirement attaches to the licensee.
One rule worth knowing before you buy a course bundle: Rule 120-2-3-.12(11) caps how many hours any single course may be approved for — 24 for a classroom course, 12 for a self-study or online course. That is a per-course ceiling, not a per-cycle one. Nothing in Georgia's rules stops you from meeting the full 24 hours online; you simply cannot do it in one sitting of one course.
The Property & Casualty guide covers the renewal mechanics in full — the 60-day early window, the 15-day late-renewal grace period, the $150 reinstatement penalty, and the point at which you have to reapply from scratch.
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