Idaho Property Study Guide

Idaho’s Property exam carries the smallest state portion of any producer line — 18 scored questions against 20 for Casualty, 22 for Personal Lines and 25 each for Life and Accident & Health. That sounds like good news until you look at the pass rates: in 2021, first-time candidates passed the Idaho portion of this exam at 61.73% and the national portion at 48.74%. The state chapter is the easy half. It is also the half you can actually finish, so finish it.

Rate regulation — Idaho is competitive, not unregulated

Idaho is routinely described as an “open competition” state where rates need no filing. Half of that is right and half of it will cost you a question.

§ 41-1402 states the “express intent of this chapter to permit and encourage competition between insurers on a sound financial basis.” § 41-1405(1) sets the familiar standard — rates “shall not be excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory.” What makes Idaho genuinely competitive is § 41-1405(2), which makes an excessiveness finding a two-part test: the Director must find both that the rate is “unreasonably high for the insurance provided” and that “a reasonable degree of competition does not exist” for that classification — and § 41-1405(4) permits neither finding “except after a hearing on reasonable notice.”

But rates are still filed. Idaho operates on a use-and-file basis, with filings due within 30 days of the effective date and an actuarial memorandum under § 41-1437. And policy forms must be filed before use — § 41-1812(1) provides that no form “shall be delivered, or issued for delivery in this state, unless the form has been filed with the director.”

Credit information — a weighing test, not a ban

§ 41-1843 forbids an insurer to “charge a higher premium than would otherwise be charged, or cancel, nonrenew or decline to issue a property or casualty policy or coverage based primarily upon an individual’s credit rating or credit history.”

The operative work is done by subsection (2), which defines “based primarily” as where “the weight given by the insurer to an individual’s credit rating or credit history exceeds the weight given by the insurer to all other criteria considered.” That is a majority-of-total-weight test — credit may be used, and used heavily, so long as it is not the dominant factor. The section reaches personal, family and household property and casualty insurance only.

IDAPA 18.02.01 adds a hard bound: the premium produced by the highest credit factor may not exceed twice the premium produced by the lowest.

The standard fire policy — and a number that changes on 1 January 2027

§ 41-2401 prescribes Idaho’s standard fire policy form, and paragraph (1)(j) sets the cancellation notice. Today it is 30 days, with 10 days where cancellation is for nonpayment, “accompanied by the reason for the cancellation.”

That changes. House Bill 562 (2026), Session Laws chapter 201, rewrites § 41-2401(1)(j) effective 1 January 2027 to require a 60-day written notice before cancellation, with the reason stated — and adds an entirely new § 41-2401(1)(k) requiring 60 days’ written notice before nonrenewal, also with the reason.

Two details the amendment does not change, and which therefore make good exam questions: the 10-day nonpayment notice stays at 10 days, and property nonrenewal has no statutory notice at all until the new paragraph takes effect.

No FAIR Plan — which is why surplus lines matters here

Most states with real catastrophe exposure keep a residual property market. Idaho does not have one. There is no FAIR Plan in Title 41 and none on any Department page — and the DOI’s own 2026 property market announcement, which describes a hardening market and notes that roughly 22 to 25 carriers have nonrenewed policies “partially due to wildfire concerns,” proposes a data call without referencing any backstop, because there is none to reference.

Wildfire is Idaho’s dominant catastrophe peril. Combine those two facts and the surplus lines market is not a specialist corner here — it is the only place a hard property risk can go.

Surplus lines — qualified by experience, not by examination

Idaho’s surplus lines path has an unusual gate. § 41-1223 licenses “any individual while licensed as a producer licensed for property or casualty insurance who has had at least two (2) years’ experience as a producer for the lines of insurance for which he is seeking to be licensed as a surplus line broker.” There is no surplus lines examination — Idaho qualifies by experience and by the Director’s judgment of competence and trustworthiness. Membership of an approved surplus line association is also required (§ 41-1214(1)).

Before exporting a risk, the broker must show that “a diligent search is made among the insurers authorized to transact and actually writing that particular kind and class of insurance in this state” (§ 41-1214(2)) — and § 41-1214(3) forbids exporting merely to obtain a lower rate or better terms. Compliance is documented by affidavit filed within 30 days of receiving the policy (§ 41-1215).

The money: Idaho’s surplus lines premium tax is 1.5%, remitted by the broker “on or before the first day of March of each year” (§ 41-1229). Where Idaho is the insured’s home state, the tax is computed on the entire premium.