What the Kansas Personal Lines License Covers
K.S.A. 40-4903 lists Personal lines as its own qualification alongside Life, Accident and health, Property, Casualty and the rest — property and casualty coverage sold to individuals and families for primarily non-commercial purposes. Homeowners, dwelling fire, renters, personal auto, personal umbrella and the floaters that attach to them.
The comparison that matters is with the combined exam, and in Kansas it is unusually close. Personal Lines is 12-KS-55 at $57. Full property and casualty authority through 12-KS-06 is $64 — seven dollars more for 140 scored questions instead of 100, and authority that reaches commercial risks. Two single-line exams would be $114.
So the honest framing is that Personal Lines saves you seven dollars and forty questions, not a great deal of money. It is the right choice when your book genuinely will be homes and cars and you want the narrower syllabus; it is the wrong choice if commercial business is plausible, because Personal Lines does not credit toward P&C later.
And it does not open the surplus lines door. Kansas requires an underlying property and casualty producer licence before you may add a surplus lines licence.
Exam Options & Format
KS Personal Lines Producer, series 12-KS-55: 100 scored questions plus 5 unscored pretest items (105 presented), 1 hour 30 minutes, $57, passing at 70%.
A pacing warning worth taking seriously. Put Kansas's exams side by side and Personal Lines is the outlier. Property and Casualty each present 89 questions in 90 minutes — about 61 seconds each. Life and Accident & Health present 95 in 90 minutes — about 57 seconds. Both combined exams present 154 in 150 minutes — about 58 seconds. Personal Lines presents 105 in 90 minutes: roughly 51 seconds a question, the highest question count of any 90-minute Kansas exam. The figures come from two Pearson VUE documents that are internally consistent with each other, so that is what is published — but plan your pacing around 51 seconds, not around what you have read about other states.
The Kansas content outline gives this paper 18 questions on laws and rules common to all lines plus 7 on property-and-casualty rules — about 25 of 100, the lightest state-law share of any Kansas major-line exam. Personal Lines rewards knowing how coverage forms work more than it rewards statutes.
Every attempt is in person — Kansas has no OnVUE option. The Property guide covers test centers, booking and the 48-hour reschedule rule; the Life & Health guide covers exam-day requirements.
The next section covers results, retakes and the two-year score clock in full.
Most Tested Topics on the Kansas Personal Lines Exam
Twenty-five Kansas questions, aimed squarely at the life cycle of a personal policy — and Kansas puts a surprising amount of it in regulations rather than statutes, which is where study material goes wrong. From the TESTivity Kansas regulations curriculum, verified against the code:
| Concept | The Kansas rule |
|---|---|
| Cancellation notice — auto and property | 30 days' written notice. The authority is K.A.R. 40-3-15, which requires fire and casualty contracts to provide that "the insured will be notified in writing at least 30 days in advance of the effective date of cancellation" |
| What that regulation excludes | Nonpayment of premium, plus accident and health policies and crop-hail |
| ⚠ Where the 30 days is NOT | K.S.A. 40-277 contains no notice period at all — it sets only the permitted grounds. K.S.A. 40-279 and 40-280 were repealed in 1981 |
| Grounds to cancel personal auto | After the policy has been in effect 60 days, or immediately on renewal, only for: nonpayment; fraudulent misrepresentation in obtaining the policy; violation of policy terms; licence suspension or revocation; epilepsy or a heart condition without physician certification; or conviction within 36 months of a felony, negligent homicide or assault by vehicle, DUI, hit-and-run, vehicle theft, a false licence application, or three moving violations within 18 months — K.S.A. 40-277 |
| Nonrenewal notice | At least 30 days' written notice to the named insured at the last known address — K.S.A. 40-276a |
| The reason, on request | The insurer must furnish it within 10 days after receiving a written request — K.A.R. 40-3-31 |
| Nonpayment and property nonrenewal | KID's consumer guidance gives 10 days for nonpayment and 30 days before expiry for property nonrenewal — note these reflect standard policy language rather than a Kansas statute |
| Commercial is different | Property or casualty coverage "used primarily for business or professional needs" gets 60 days' notice — K.S.A. 40-2,120 and 40-2,121 |
| Not the cancellation statute | K.S.A. 40-2,112 governs adverse underwriting decisions, not cancellation — a very common miscite |
| Residual market — auto | The Kansas Automobile Insurance Plan (KAIP), under K.S.A. 40-2101 and 40-2102, which requires insurers to submit a plan for "the equitable apportionment among insurers of applicants for insurance who, in good faith are entitled to, but are unable to procure such insurance through ordinary methods" |
| The KAIP notice duty | On cancelling or declining to renew — nonpayment excepted — the insurer "shall notify the named insured of his possible eligibility for such coverage through the Kansas automobile insurance plan" — K.S.A. 40-278 |
| KAIP eligibility | After at least three companies have rejected you for personal auto insurance |
| Residual market — property | The Kansas All-Industry Placement Facility, the state's FAIR Plan under K.S.A. 40-2142 — also after three declinations |
| Auto minimums | 25/50/25, with mandatory PIP — Kansas is a no-fault state; the Casualty guide covers the benefit schedule |
The single most valuable correction on this page is where the thirty days lives. Almost every Kansas study aid attributes the auto cancellation notice to K.S.A. 40-277. It is not there — 40-277 sets grounds and a 60-day window and stops. The 30-day notice requirement is K.A.R. 40-3-15, a regulation adopted under K.S.A. 40-103, and it applies to fire and casualty contracts generally rather than to auto specifically. Meanwhile the 30-day nonrenewal notice is statutory, at K.S.A. 40-276a. Statute for nonrenewal, regulation for cancellation — an odd split, and exactly the kind of thing an exam writer likes.
The second is the pair of "three declinations." Kansas runs two residual markets and both open on the same trigger: three companies must have declined you. Auto goes to the Kansas Automobile Insurance Plan; property goes to the Kansas All-Industry Placement Facility, the FAIR Plan created in 2017. And there is a producer-facing duty attached to the auto side — under K.S.A. 40-278, when an insurer cancels for a reason other than nonpayment, or declines to renew, it must tell the insured they may be eligible for KAIP. That notice travels with the cancellation notice; it is not optional.
Your Score, Your Retakes, and Kansas's Two-Year Clock
You leave with the result in your hand. The handbook is unambiguous: "the examination will end automatically when the examination time has expired, and candidates will leave the test center with their official scores in hand." No portal, no waiting, no email. Since Kansas has no remote testing, that is true of every Kansas attempt.
What counts as a pass: 70%. The candidate handbook states "the passing score required on each examination is 70%" — and that is the whole of what any Kansas source says about it. The handbook never says whether the 70 is a raw percent-correct of the scored items or a scaled figure, and no Kansas Department of Insurance page states a passing score at all. Study to master the outline rather than to a computed cutoff, and treat any site that tells you confidently which kind of 70 it is as guessing.
The pretest items don't count, and you can't tell which they are. Personal Lines presents 105 questions of which 100 are scored and 5 are unscored pretest items, unmarked and indistinguishable. Answer all 105 at the same tempo. There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so never leave one blank — and on this exam in particular, with about 51 seconds a question, the bigger risk is running out of clock rather than running out of knowledge.
Retakes come in two steps. First, "candidates must wait at least 24 hours before scheduling an appointment to retest." Second, "candidates who fail the examination must wait at least seven calendar days before retaking the examination." So the earliest realistic retest is a week out, not the next morning.
There is no limit on attempts. The handbook says so directly — "there is no limit on the number of times a candidate may take an examination" — and KID confirms it: "no limitations on retaking the exam; however, there is a seven-day waiting period." Each attempt is a fresh $57, and no re-application to the Department is needed between attempts.
Then the clock — and Kansas is unusually generous. "Examination test scores are valid for two years." KID's own applicant checklist agrees, and so does NIPR. Two years is one of the longest score-validity windows in the country; several states give you six months. It removes most of the time pressure that trips candidates up elsewhere.
But two other clocks run shorter, and they are the ones that actually bite. Your application and fingerprints are valid for six months — KID's checklist: "applications and fingerprints are valid for six months." And your Certificate of Tax Clearance is valid for only 90 days. So the exam is the loosest constraint in the Kansas process, not the tightest. Plan the paperwork around the 90-day certificate, not the two-year score.
One structural convenience worth knowing. Kansas does not require you to test before you apply: "candidates may apply either in advance of taking the exam or after passing the exam." Most states insist on exam-then-apply. If you are confident, filing first can compress the whole timeline — though it starts the six-month application window running, so only do it when the tax clearance and waiver form are ready to go.
And if you failed? Kansas publishes no diagnostic breakdown in the handbook beyond the score report itself, and there is no partial credit or portion carry-forward — Kansas scores one integrated exam, so a retake is the whole paper. Spend the seven-day wait on the section weights rather than re-reading everything: on Personal Lines that means the property and casualty terms and coverage forms, which carry three-quarters of the questions, before the 25-question Kansas block.
What It Costs
$57 exam + $60 criminal background check + $10 application (2026) — about $127, plus NIPR's transaction fee. There is no course to buy: KID states "Kansas does not have a pre-licensing education requirement."
The comparison: full property and casualty authority through the combined 12-KS-06 costs $64 rather than $57 — about $134 all in, seven dollars more for substantially broader authority.
Fingerprint capture is free at KID's Topeka office and at six Department of Children and Families locations; a Pearson VUE Professional Center charges $20. The $60 background check is the fixed cost.
The application fee is re-set annually by the Commissioner and published in the Kansas Register under K.S.A. 40-4905, capped at $30 — $10 for 2026, $15 for 2025. Every retake is a further $57. Renewal is $4 every two years.
Eligibility Requirements
Be at least 18, submit fingerprints for a state and national criminal history record check under K.S.A. 40-4905, hold a current Kansas Department of Revenue Certificate of Tax Clearance, and avoid the seventeen grounds in K.S.A. 40-4909.
No pre-licensing course, and no designation waiver — Kansas's six statutory exam waivers turn on prior licensure rather than credentials. The Accident & Health guide covers them in full.
The Life guide walks the NIPR application and the tax clearance; the Casualty guide walks fingerprinting.
Keeping the License Active
Important CE details: Medical and military extensions are available through a Kansas Department of Insurance form, and CE providers pay $50 per course per year or $250 for unlimited annual submissions.
Biennial term ending the last day of your birth month, in odd years for an odd birth year and even years for an even one. CE is 18 hours per cycle including at least 3 in ethics — and a narrower licence does not mean fewer hours, because Kansas's requirement attaches to the licensee rather than to the lines held.
No carryover: courses must be completed inside the biennium to which they apply, and the same course cannot be repeated for credit within a period.
Credits post through State Based Systems (SBS), and NIPR checks CE compliance before it will accept a renewal filing. The Property & Casualty guide covers the renewal window, the late-renewal ladder and the automatic suspension that follows a missed CE deadline.
Quick Reference
Official Links
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