What the Hawaii Personal Lines Authority Covers
Personal lines is one of the eight lines of authority in HRS § 431:9A-107, and Hawaii defines it in the statute rather than leaving it to custom: "property and casualty insurance coverage sold to individuals and families for primarily noncommercial purposes." Homeowners, dwelling fire, personal auto, personal inland marine, personal umbrella.
Note the word "primarily." Hawaii's definition is slightly softer than the flat "noncommercial" some states use, which matters at the edges — the home office, the occasional rental, the personal truck used for a side business.
Why choose it. Hawaii has no combined Property & Casualty exam: those are separate lines requiring separate sittings at $75 each. Personal lines is one exam and one $75, which is the cheapest route into Hawaii property-casualty work — and, if your book will genuinely be homeowners and personal auto, the broader lines buy authority you will never exercise.
But be clear-eyed about the exam. Personal Lines is Hawaii's longest producer exam — 116 scored questions across 150 minutes, against 83 for Property and 91 for Casualty. Its general-knowledge section alone carries 75 scored questions where every other Hawaii exam has 50. You are saving a fee and a filing, not study time.
No pre-licensing education is required for this or any Hawaii line — zero hours, per the current handbook. The licensing authority is the DCCA Insurance Division.
Exam Options & Format
The Hawaii Personal Lines exam is InsHI_Pers55 through Pearson VUE: 116 scored questions plus 12 unscored pretest items, at $75, passing at a scaled 70.
It runs in two separately-timed sections: 75 scored general-knowledge questions in 90 minutes, then 41 scored Hawaii-specific questions in 60 minutes. Two and a half hours in total, and time does not transfer across the boundary.
That 75-question general section is genuinely unusual — every other Hawaii producer exam allots 50. It is not an error; it is why this exam is longer than the two lines it substitutes for. Budget your preparation accordingly: the national material carries more weight here than on any other Hawaii paper.
The alternatives are Property (InsHI_Prop03) at 83 scored questions and Casualty (InsHI_Cas04) at 91, each $75, each granting a broader line that reaches commercial risks. Taking both is two exams and $150 — the Property and Casualty guides cover them.
Both delivery modes are available. The Property guide covers Hawaii's four test centers and the island problem; the Accident & Health guide covers OnVUE. Which you choose bears directly on what happens if you fail, as the results section below explains.
Most Tested Topics on the Hawaii Personal Lines Exam
Forty-one scored questions are Hawaii law, and personal lines here means two things above all: a no-fault auto system whose minimum limits just changed, and cancellation rules with an unusual proof requirement. Each row is verified:
| Concept | The Hawaii rule |
|---|---|
| Auto fault system | NO-FAULT — your own insurer pays medical and rehabilitation costs regardless of fault (HRS ch. 431 art. 10C) |
| Minimum liability limits | 40/80/20 — effective 1 January 2026, replacing 20/40/10. $40,000 bodily injury per person, $80,000 per accident, $20,000 property damage |
| Which policies the new limits reach | All new and renewal policies with effective dates on or after 1 January 2026 |
| PIP | $10,000 per person, mandatory — unchanged by the increase |
| Tort threshold | $5,000 in PIP benefits incurred; or, regardless of amount, death, significant permanent loss of use of a body part or function, or permanent and serious disfigurement (§ 431:10C-306) |
| Uninsured / underinsured motorist | Offered, not mandatory — rejectable in writing by the named insured, with the UIM signature required adjacent to or directly below the offer |
| Prohibited rating factors | Age, sex, marital status, credit bureau rating and length of driving experience are all banned in motor-vehicle rating and underwriting (§ 431:10C-207) |
| Negligence rule | Modified comparative, 51% bar — barred when the claimant's negligence is greater than the aggregate negligence of those sued (HRS § 663-31) |
| Auto cancellation | 30 days' written notice; 20 days for nonpayment; coverage continues through the notice period (§ 431:10C-112) |
| Proof of notice | A cancellation or nonrenewal is not valid unless evidence of mailing is provided — auto notices require a validated USPS certificate of mailing |
| Auto initial window | 60 days — during the first 60 days of a new auto policy the insurer may cancel more freely; after that, statutory grounds only (§ 431:10C-111) |
| Property cancellation, generally | At least 10 days' notice to cancel and 30 days' notice of nonrenewal under § 431:10-226.5, with the longer of any competing period controlling |
| Reason for nonrenewal | Hawaii does not require the insurer to state a reason for nonrenewal — though the permitted grounds for cancelling auto mid-term are separately restricted |
| Residual auto market | The Hawaii Joint Underwriting Plan (§ 431:10C-407) |
Start with the limits, because they moved this year. Hawaii ran on 20/40/10 for decades; on 1 January 2026 the minimums became 40/80/20, applying to every new and renewal policy effective on or after that date. PIP stayed at $10,000. This is the fact most likely to be wrong in whatever else you are reading — including, at the time of writing, some statute mirrors that still serve the pre-2026 text.
Then the prohibited rating factors, which are the most distinctive thing about Hawaii personal auto. A young driver surcharge, a gender-based rate, a married-couple discount, a credit-based insurance score, a rate reflecting years of driving experience — every one of those is prohibited in Hawaii motor-vehicle insurance under § 431:10C-207, and case law extends the ban from rating plans into underwriting. National material will teach you the opposite about credit in particular.
Third, the evidence-of-mailing rule. Hawaii does not merely require notice; it requires proof. A cancellation or nonrenewal "shall not be deemed valid unless evidence of mailing is provided," and for auto that means a validated USPS certificate of mailing. A fact pattern where an insurer sent notice but cannot prove it is a fact pattern where the cancellation failed.
Results, Retakes and the Clocks That Run Against You
Your result is immediate — and deliberately uninformative if you pass. The handbook is explicit: "numeric scores are only reported to failing candidates." Pass and you are told you passed, with no figure attached. Fail and you receive a number showing how close you came.
The standard is 70, and it is a SCALED score, not a raw percentage. That distinction matters more than it sounds. A scaled score is a converted figure that adjusts for differences in difficulty between exam forms, so "I need to get 70% of the questions right" is not quite what the standard says. On a 116-question paper it is not safe to reason backwards from the number to a count of questions.
A failing report is a study plan. The score report breaks performance down by content area, and Hawaii's content outlines (#121201) are organised into the same weighted sections — and, unusually, into two separately-scored halves. A candidate who was strong on national material and weak on Hawaii law learns that immediately, which is a far better guide to a second attempt than starting over.
Now the clocks. There are three, and they are independent.
Clock one — the retake wait, which depends on where you tested. At a test center, you must wait 24 hours before booking again. Through OnVUE, the first retest cannot be taken for 2 weeks, and each subsequent retest for 4 weeks. This asymmetry is the single most consequential scheduling fact in Hawaii, and almost no third-party guide mentions it. If you are on Kauai and chose OnVUE to avoid a flight, a failure costs you a fortnight — where a flight would have cost you a day. The Accident & Health guide covers the OnVUE trade-off in full.
The handbook states no cap on total attempts. Note the careful phrasing: no limit is stated, which is not the same as an affirmative promise of unlimited attempts. Each attempt is a fresh $75, and exam fees are nonrefundable — failing to appear or failing to pass means reapplying and re-paying.
Clock two — the two-year score validity, and how Hawaii measures it. HRS § 431:9A-106 requires that the applicant passed "within the two years immediately preceding the issuance of the license." The two years run backward from issuance, not forward from your exam and not from your application. Two years is generous by national standards — most states allow one — but the measurement point means a file that sits in deficiency review is spending your margin, not the Division's.
Clock three — the 60-day fingerprint window, which is the one that actually catches people. The NIPR application must be filed within 60 days of the date you were fingerprinted. It runs forward from the print date, and nothing in the exam or application process reminds you of it. The Casualty guide walks the fingerprint process in detail.
After you pass. File through NIPR with the $150 fee — the Life guide covers the application screen by screen — and remember you must be appointed by an insurer before acting as its agent. Your licence will then expire on the last day of your birth month on a two-year cycle, which the P&C guide covers along with the CE deadline that sits 15 days ahead of it.
What It Costs
$75 to Pearson VUE for InsHI_Pers55, and $150 to the Insurance Division for the resident producer licence through NIPR — $225 in published fees on a first-attempt pass, plus Fieldprint's fingerprint charge, which the Division does not publish.
No course cost, because Hawaii requires no pre-licensing education.
The comparison worth making: Personal Lines is one $75 exam; Property plus Casualty is two. Against that, this is the longer exam and the narrower authority. If you might ever write a commercial risk, the extra $75 buys a line you cannot add retroactively without another exam and possibly another fingerprinting.
Recurring: $100 to renew every two years, $300 to reapply within a year of nonrenewal. Retakes are $75 each and nonrefundable — bookable after 24 hours at a test center, or 2 weeks through OnVUE.
Eligibility Requirements
You must be at least 18, pass InsHI_Pers55, complete fingerprinting through Fieldprint under code HI-DCCA-INS, and file through NIPR within 60 days of being fingerprinted with the $150 fee.
No professional designation waives a Hawaii exam. HRS § 431:9A-109 names none — not CPCU, not CIC, not AAI. The only statutory exemption is prior licensure for the same lines in another state, either currently held or cancelled within the previous 90 days with the home state certifying good standing. A producer moving to Hawaii must apply within 90 days of establishing legal residence to use it.
The Life guide covers the NIPR application step by step; the Casualty guide covers fingerprinting; the P&C guide covers reciprocity, nonresident licensing and Hawaii's 180-day temporary licences.
Keeping Your License Active
Important CE details: Personal lines sits in the property/casualty/surety CE class — 21 class hours plus 3 ethics if you hold no life or health line.
24 credit hours every two years, due by the last day of your birth month — and in practice 15 days before it, because Commissioner's Memorandum 2022-3LIC requires completion that far ahead to allow providers their reporting window.
Personal lines sits in the property/casualty/surety class, so holding it alone means 21 hours in that class plus 3 hours of ethics or Hawaii insurance laws and rules. Add a life or health line and the split becomes 10 + 11 + 3.
No carryover — excess hours do not roll forward. And adding a line of authority mid-cycle does not extend your cycle: the full 24 hours, including hours for the new line, remain due by your existing renewal date.
Miss the deadline and the licence goes inactive automatically. Reinstatement within twelve months costs $300 and does not require re-examination. The P&C guide covers renewal and reinstatement.
Quick Reference
Official Links
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