Hawaii Personal Lines Study Guide

Hawaii defines personal lines in statute rather than leaving it to custom: “property and casualty insurance coverage sold to individuals and families for primarily noncommercial purposes” (HRS § 431:9A-107). Note the word primarily — Hawaii’s definition is a little softer than the flat “noncommercial” some states use, and the softness shows up at the edges: the home office, the occasional rental, the personal truck used for a side business.

Forty-one of your scored questions are Hawaii law, and they concentrate on personal auto — where the numbers changed this January — and on how a personal policy can be ended.

The auto minimums changed on 1 January 2026

Hawaii’s minimum liability limits ran at 20/40/10 for decades. As of 1 January 2026 they are 40/80/20: $40,000 bodily injury per person, $80,000 per accident, $20,000 property damage. The Insurance Division applies the new figures to all new and renewal policies with effective dates on or after 1 January 2026.

PIP was left alone at $10,000.

Hawaii remains a no-fault state: your own insurer pays medical and rehabilitation costs regardless of fault, and you reach tort only past the threshold — $5,000 in PIP benefits incurred, or, whatever the amount, death, significant permanent loss of use of a body part or function, or permanent and serious disfigurement.

UM and UIM are offered, not required. They must be presented, and the named insured may reject them in writing; the underinsured rejection must be signed adjacent to or directly below the offer.

The rating factors that are off the table

HRS § 431:10C-207 prohibits basing any motor-vehicle rating plan, “in whole or in part, directly or indirectly,” on age, sex, marital status, credit bureau rating or length of driving experience — alongside race, creed, ethnic extraction and physical handicap. Case law carries the ban into underwriting standards as well as rating.

For a personal lines producer this is the most practically important rule in the chapter, because the factors Hawaii forbids are exactly the ones personal auto pricing normally runs on everywhere else.

Ending a policy — notice, and proof of it

Auto (§ 431:10C-112): 30 days’ written notice to cancel, 20 days for nonpayment, with coverage continuing through the notice period. During the first 60 days of a new auto policy the insurer has broader latitude; after that, statutory grounds only (§ 431:10C-111).

Property generally (§ 431:10-226.5): at least 10 days’ notice to cancel and at least 30 days’ notice of nonrenewal — with an important ordering rule, that where any longer period is required “the longer period shall be applicable.” That is why auto’s 30/20 rule overrides the general 10-day floor rather than competing with it.

And Hawaii requires proof. A cancellation or nonrenewal “shall not be deemed valid unless evidence of mailing is provided” — for auto, a validated USPS certificate of mailing. An insurer who sent the notice but cannot evidence it has not effected a cancellation.

One further asymmetry worth knowing: Hawaii does not require the insurer to state a reason for nonrenewal, though the permitted grounds for cancelling auto mid-term are separately restricted.

Why “primarily noncommercial” is the load-bearing phrase

The statutory definition is the boundary of your authority. A risk written for a business purpose sits outside personal lines and inside Property, Casualty, or both — which in Hawaii are genuinely separate lines of authority, each with its own exam and its own $75.

So the familiar scenarios matter more here than in a combined-licence state: the homeowner running a business from the house, the personal vehicle used for deliveries, the second property let to tenants. Each is a question about whether the coverage is still being sold to individuals and families for primarily noncommercial purposes — and in Hawaii that phrase comes from the statute, not from an underwriting guide.