Hawaii Adjuster Regulations

“The scaled score that is reported to you is neither the number of questions you answered correctly nor the percentage of questions you answered correctly.”

“Raw scores are converted into scaled scores.” — and forms are equated so “a statistical procedure known as equating is used to correct for differences in form difficulty.”

⚠ And the statute delegates the whole question. § 431:9-206 requires only that an applicant pass “to the satisfaction of the commissioner.” No number in the Code; no examination chapter in the administrative rules. The 70 is a department-set cut score published by the vendor.

One more thing: “numeric scores are only reported to failing candidates.” Pass, and you get a report marked “pass” with no figure at all.

The candidate handbook #121200 (rev. January 2026) carries the exam codes, the time limits, the $75 fee and the scaled-score explanation — and no question counts at all.
The content outlines #121201 (01/2026) carry the question counts — and no time limits.

⚠ If a source hands you both from one place, it has invented one of them — and it is almost always the count, because the handbook is the document people actually read.

§ 431:9-222.5(b): the holder of a claims adjuster’s limited license “may extend the license biennially upon successfully passing a reexamination.” The Insurance Division states it plainly: “For work comp adjuster: You are required to retake and successfully pass the Hawaii Insurance License Exam for renewal.”

⚠ So the article contains two different term rules. A biennial statutory cycle for the limited license; a Commissioner-determined 1-to-3-year date for the independent and public licenses. And the independent and public adjuster owe neither CE nor a reexamination.

The obvious way for the duty to come back is Article 9A, and Article 9A is sealed at its first section.
• § 431:9A-101: “This article governs qualifications and procedures for the licensing of insurance producers.”
• § 431:9A-102 defines “licensee” as “any type of insurance producer or producer.”
• § 431:9A-124(a) keys the credit-hour duty to “a licensee” so defined.

An adjuster is not inside that definition, so the duty never reaches one. Scope clauses run in both directions — elsewhere they sweep adjusters into a rule captioned for agents. Read § 1.0 of the instrument, never the caption.

$165 = $75 + $45 + $45, which looks like a two-year initial term. No source states one, and § 431:9-232(c) says something else entirely. A fee schedule prices services; it does not declare terms.

⚠ And note which two lines the legislature refused to fill in: the examination fee and the fingerprint fee are both “a fee to be established by the commissioner” — no amount, and no cap. Figures near $65 circulate for fingerprinting. None traces to the Commissioner, the Division or the vendor.

The Insurance Division’s chapters under HAR Title 16 can be listed end to end — proxies of domestic stock insurers, mass merchandising of motor vehicle insurance, credit life and credit disability, the medical malpractice underwriting plan, Medicare supplement standards, the holding company system, captives, the guaranty association summary document, premium tax credit, life and health reinsurance, the motor vehicle insurance law, credit for reinsurance, actuarial opinion, disclosure of material transactions, miscellaneous insurance rules, fund assessments, recording fee guidelines, annual audited financial reporting, corporate governance and reserve financing.

Not one addresses claims. Even the motor vehicle rule — eighteen subchapters — has no claim-handling subchapter.

⚠ A researcher who searches for a Hawaii claims rule, finds nothing, and reports “Hawaii publishes no claim deadlines” has drawn a false conclusion from a true absence.

(B) says “working days.” (F) and (G) say “calendar days.” They sit within a few lines of each other and the drafter chose the words deliberately. Fifteen working days is about three calendar weeks; thirty calendar days is about four. Do not normalize them because it is tidier.

⚠ And notice whose communications start the 15-working-day clock: (B)(ii) reads “Any other persons, including the commissioner.” A Division inquiry runs on the same clock as the policyholder’s letter — and answering it with a holding reply is expressly not a response.

A single mishandled file is not a § 431:13-103(a)(11) violation. The chapeau requires conduct performed “with such frequency as to indicate a general business practice.”

⚠ But a single mishandled file can absolutely be common-law bad faith — which has no frequency element at all, and which the Hawaii Supreme Court created precisely because the administrative remedy was inadequate (cluster 4). Teach one half alone and you have told a candidate a one-off failure is harmless.

A payment issued with “final settlement” on the memo line, on a claim where supplemental benefits are probable, is an enumerated unfair practice — unless the policy limit has been paid or there is a bona fide dispute over coverage or amount.

⚠ The exception saves you when you are genuinely disputing. It does not save you when you are simply being tidy.

“Independent tort cause of action” is the opinion’s own phrase, taken from the opinion and not from a fifty-state compendium. That characterization is what puts emotional distress and punitive damages on the table, because both are generally unavailable in a pure contract action.

The court’s route was a clause inside the article itself — § 431:13-202(b): “No order of the Commissioner … shall in any way relieve or absolve any person … from any other liability, penalty, or forfeiture required by law.” It reasoned that “the legislature deemed the existing administrative remedies inadequate” because they “do not afford compensation to the individual damaged by the insurance carrier.”

§ 480-2 contains no insurance exemption on its face. The carve-out is judicial, and the official code carries it as a case note: “Section inapplicable to insurance business. 795 F. Supp. 1036.” That is Genovia, Civ. No. 91-00288, U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii, 11 June 1992, applying § 431:1-104 — specific Insurance Code provisions “prevail over” general ones.

⚠ Notice how thin that is. The § 480-13 treble-damages route is closed on a 1992 federal district court decision plus a canon — no Hawaii Supreme Court decision squarely so holds.

In Enoka v. AIG Hawaii Ins. Co. the court applied § 431:10C-315 to a bad-faith claim and held that subsection (a)(2) “does not condition the last payment … to be from a defendant insurer.”

⚠ Every benefit payment you make can restart a two-year clock that also governs a bad-faith action against your own file.

Best Place is No. 16065. Hough is No. 16019. Miller is No. SCCQ-11-0000329. Masaki is No. 13023. MacAbio is No. 19659.

Parallel reporter citations for all of them circulate on free databases and could not be confirmed against a primary source. A docket number plus court plus decision date is either right or obviously absent. A guessed reporter cite is neither.

If the insurer, “no later than seventy-two hours after the date on which the loss is reported to the insurer, either pays or commits in writing to pay the insured the limits of any coverage,” the public adjuster shall “Not receive a commission consisting of a percentage of the total amount paid by an insurer to resolve a claim.”

⚠ Most states cap a public adjuster’s percentage. Hawaii sets no cap and instead hands the carrier a way to switch the percentage mechanism off entirely. Move inside three days of first notice, tender or commit in writing to limits, and the contract’s percentage route closes by operation of statute.

Both adjustments are in the same subsection and they push in opposite directions.

➕ ADD: “The applicable amounts of deductible or copayment paid or incurred” count toward the $5,000. An insured with a $1,000 PIP deductible reaches the threshold a thousand dollars sooner than the paid-benefits figure suggests.
➖ SUBTRACT: “When a person has optional coverage, benefits received in excess of the maximum basic personal injury protection limits shall not be included.” Buying extra PIP does not get a claimant to the threshold faster.

⚠ So the number is not “what did we pay?” It is: basic-limit PIP incurred + deductible and copayment − anything paid above the basic limit under optional coverage. Apply only one adjustment and you open or close a tort claim the statute does not.

§ 431:10C-305 is captioned “Source of payment” and answers who pays, not when. It carries no deadlines at all.

What it does carry: the priority order (vehicle occupied → vehicle that caused the harm if the injured person is a pedestrian → any other applicable insurance); an anti-duplication rule; and the fact that workers’ compensation is PRIMARY — PIP is “paid secondarily and net of” comp benefits, with the combined wage-loss recovery capped at eighty percent of monthly earnings.

⚠ And a contested comp claim is not your extension: “If the person does not collect … by reason of the contest of this right, the injured person shall, nevertheless, be entitled to receive personal injury protection benefits.”

§ 386-31(b): benefits are paid “promptly as they accrue … without waiting for a decision from the director, unless this right is controverted by the employer in the employer’s initial report of industrial injury.” That report is due within seven working days under § 386-95.

⚠ Miss the filing and you have not merely been late — you have lost the vehicle for contesting the claim, and benefits are running from the tenth day whether or not anyone decided to pay them.

LAVA ZONES. §§ 431:10E-141 and -142 create an insurance regime for the County of Hawaii, capping nonrenewals at five percent per calendar year once the mayor proclaims a lava-flow emergency — with the residual market required under § 431:21-119 to “remove its moratorium” and offer new policies, subject to a waiting period “no longer than six months.”

THE HURRICANE RELIEF FUND (ch. 431P) IS BACK — hurricane-only excess coverage for condominium associations, $140 million limit above a $10 million primary, 2% per-building deductible.

⚠ AND 2025 ACT 296 MOVED THE NUMBERS OUT OF THE STATUTE. It removed the hard-coded coverage caps and fixed deductibles from chapter 431P and directed that they “shall be established in the plan of operation, subject to approval by the commissioner.” A Hurricane Relief Fund limit cited to the statute is now citing the wrong instrument.

2026 Act 040 rewrites § 431:9-235 whole: new caption “Disciplinary licensing actions,” new sanctions of denial and probation, and a grounds list that goes from eight to seventeen — adding felony conviction, out-of-state discipline, forging a name, using notes during a licensing examination, accepting business from an unlicensed person, and child-support and tax noncompliance. The hearing-request window moves from 15 days to 10.

⚠ AND READ THE DIFF, NOT THE DATE, ON § 431:9-238. The fine range is $100 to $10,000 on both sides of the change. What moved is that the fine now attaches to any § 431:9-235 action including denial and probation, that it may be levied on an APPLICANT who has no license to lose, and that “after a hearing” is struck.

2026 Act 256 adds four sections to the property article after the 2023 Maui wildfires — a producer notice duty, an insurer duty to reevaluate replacement cost and offer additional coverage (offer open 30 days, renewing annually), and a $250 per violation penalty.