What This License Is
A Kentucky casualty line of authority covers liability insurance — automobile, general liability, professional liability, workers' compensation and the rest of the third-party market. It is a separate line from property, examined separately, with its own 20-hour pre-licensing course.
There is no combined Property & Casualty exam in Kentucky. What exists is a combined fee: request both exams at the same time and Form 8304 sets the charge at $50 total. If you take both, pre-licensing rises to 40 hours for the pair (806 KAR 9:025 §1(1)).
The casualty line is also the gateway to surplus lines. Kentucky's surplus lines broker license is not a standalone credential you can qualify for on its own — it rests on an active property and casualty agent license, and terminates if that license lapses. The deep dive is further down this page.
Exam Options & Format
Kentucky administers this exam itself — no PSI, Pearson VUE or Prometric writes, administers or grades it, and there is no candidate handbook. (PSI holds a Department contract on the continuing-education and pre-licensing side only.) The Department writes it, schedules it through DOI eServices after your application clears, administers it at fifteen in-state sites and grades it on completion. The Property guide lists the sites.
70% of the questions answered correctly to pass, a raw percentage rather than a scaled score (806 KAR 9:025 §2(5)). Retakes are $50 on Form 8304, unlimited, no waiting period, confined to the 120 days your application stays alive.
The Department's casualty study outline is dated April 15, 2010 and is built on a 2006 manual. It is useful for structure — it expressly lists "Motor Vehicle Insurance No-Fault KRS 304.39" and workers' compensation under KRS Chapter 342 as Kentucky-specific content — and dangerous for substance, because it predates the 2017 minimum-limits amendment, the 2024 underinsured-motorist amendment and the entire 2026 package that rewrote the PIP schedule. Use it as a map. Get the numbers from the statute.
Most Tested Topics on the Kentucky Casualty Exam
Two systems carry the Kentucky-specific weight here: the Motor Vehicle Reparations Act at KRS Chapter 304, Subtitle 39, and workers' compensation under KRS Chapter 342. The MVRA is the larger of the two by a distance, and it changed in 2026 for the first time in half a century. From the TESTivity Kentucky curriculum, statute-verified:
| Concept | The Kentucky rule |
|---|---|
| Fault system | Choice no-fault. Basic reparation benefits pay regardless of fault, and anyone using a vehicle on Kentucky roads is deemed to have accepted the system unless they affirmatively rejected the tort limitation beforehand |
| Basic reparation benefits, aggregate | $10,000 per person per accident for all economic loss — and this figure was NOT raised by the 2026 amendments (KRS 304.39-020(2)) |
| Weekly work loss cap | $500 per week for benefits issued or renewed on or after July 15, 2026 — raised from $200, the first change since 1974. It is a single aggregate figure covering work loss, survivor's economic loss, replacement services loss and survivor's replacement services loss together; the categories do not stack (KRS 304.39-130) |
| Funeral and burial | $5,000 per person for benefits issued or renewed on or after July 15, 2026 — raised from $1,000 (KRS 304.39-020) |
| What "loss" includes | A closed list: medical expense, work loss, replacement services loss, and — where injury causes death — survivor's economic loss and survivor's replacement services loss. No pain and suffering inside BRB |
| Tort threshold | Medical expense exceeding $1,000 — or, whatever the figure, any of seven injuries: permanent disfigurement; a fracture to a bone; a compound, comminuted, displaced or compressed fracture; loss of a body member; permanent injury within reasonable medical probability; permanent loss of bodily function; or death (KRS 304.39-060) |
| How the tort limitation is rejected | On Form NF-1, executed in writing or electronically and filed with the Department of Insurance before any accident, effective on the Department's file-stamp date. Each household member signs individually; a parent signs for a minor under 18 (806 KAR 39:030) |
| Minimum liability limits | 25/50/25 — or a single limit of not less than $60,000. The $60,000 combined single limit is Kentucky-specific and a frequent distractor (KRS 304.39-110) |
| Added reparation benefits | Must be made available in $10,000 units up to the lesser of $40,000 or the liability security above the statutory minimum; BRB deductibles of $250, $500 and $1,000 must also be offered (KRS 304.39-140) |
| Overdue reparation benefits | Overdue if unpaid 30 days after the obligor receives reasonable proof; 12% per annum — or 18% where the delay was "without reasonable foundation." Two rates, not one (KRS 304.39-210) |
| Uninsured motorist | Must be provided, but any named insured may reject it in writing, and that rejection binds every insured under the policy (KRS 304.20-020) |
| Underinsured motorist | Defined by judgment, not by a limits comparison: "a party with motor vehicle liability insurance coverage in an amount less than a judgment recovered against that party" (KRS 304.39-320) |
| The 30-day UIM consent procedure | Where the injured party proposes to settle with the tortfeasor for less than full compensation, written notice by certified or registered mail goes to every UIM insurer, which then has 30 days to consent or to preserve subrogation — and if it preserves subrogation it must pay the injured party the amount of the written offer within 30 days (KRS 304.39-320) |
| Workers' compensation system | Competitive, not monopolistic. The Kentucky Employers' Mutual Insurance Authority is described by statute as "a competitive state fund" and a "de jure municipal corporation and political subdivision," writing in the voluntary market and as insurer of last resort (KRS 342.803) |
| Workers' compensation exemptions | Kentucky's coverage duty is broad and the exemptions do the work: KRS 342.650 excepts any person employed in agriculture, domestic servants in a private home with fewer than two employees regularly working 40+ hours a week, persons serving a religious or charitable organisation for aid or sustenance, and certain ministers and church cemetery caretakers |
Start with what did not change. The 2026 amendments raised the weekly work-loss cap and the funeral benefit but left the $10,000 aggregate exactly where it has been since 1974, and left the $1,000 tort threshold untouched as well. A question that offers a raised aggregate is testing whether you assumed the whole schedule moved together. It did not.
Then handle the transition, because both sets of numbers are correct right now. Section 7 of 2026 Ky. Acts ch. 149 applies the new figures only to benefits "issued or renewed on or after July 15, 2026." A policy written in March 2026 still carries $200 a week and $1,000 for a funeral until it renews. In practice that means the right answer to "what is the weekly work-loss limit in Kentucky?" is a date question wearing a number's clothes — and it means every Kentucky study guide published before mid-2026 is now wrong on those two figures.
The rejection form is the other reliable trap, and it is procedural rather than numerical. Candidates learn that Kentucky drivers can opt out of no-fault and stop there. The tested detail is that the rejection has to be filed with the Department before the accident and takes effect on the Department's file stamp. A form signed at the kitchen table, or sitting in the agent's file, does nothing at all — and each household member has to execute it personally, so one signature does not cover a family.
Finally, note how Kentucky defines an underinsured motorist. Most states compare the tortfeasor's limits with the claimant's UIM limits. Kentucky compares the tortfeasor's limits with the judgment recovered against that party — which means underinsurance is established after the fact, not at the time of the crash. That definition is what makes the 30-day consent procedure necessary, and the two are almost always tested together.
The Surplus Lines Path From a Kentucky Casualty License
Surplus lines is the market for risks the admitted carriers will not write — high hazard, high limit, novel, or simply unattractive. In Kentucky it requires its own license, and the route to it runs through the casualty and property lines you are studying for now.
There is no surplus lines examination. This is the first thing that surprises people, and it is worth quoting the statute. KRS 304.10-120(1) says a person may be licensed as a surplus lines broker who "is a resident of Kentucky or is a nonresident who is not eligible to be issued a license in accordance with KRS 304.9-140" and "is deemed by the commissioner to be competent and trustworthy with respect to the handling of surplus lines." That is the whole qualification test — a discretionary finding, not a score. 806 KAR 9:025 §2 enumerates the examinations Kentucky requires and surplus lines is not among them.
But the license is parasitic on your agent license. KRS 304.10-120(6) provides that if the resident surplus lines broker "fails to maintain his or her agent license with lines of authority for property and casualty, or health and life for a broker procuring surplus lines insurance providing disability coverage, then the surplus lines broker license shall terminate." So the examination requirement does not disappear — it moves upstream. You earn it by holding the property and casualty lines, and you keep it by keeping them, which means keeping your continuing education current. Let CE slide and you lose two licenses on the same day.
The fee is $100 for the license and $100 to renew (806 KAR 4:010).
Diligent effort comes first. A Kentucky surplus lines broker may not simply prefer the non-admitted market. There must be a diligent effort to place the risk with an admitted carrier first, and the Department is explicit that a broker may not export a risk merely to obtain a lower premium or more favourable terms than the admitted market offers. Price alone is never the justification; unavailability is.
The tax and filing burden is real, and it is local. Surplus lines premium is taxed under KRS 304.10-180 rather than under the ordinary local government premium tax at KRS 91A.080, and the compliance work falls on the broker personally. Returns go quarterly to each applicable local government, with an annual reconciliation filed with both the Department and those local governments by March 31, including a listing of the insurers that supplied the coverage. Because Kentucky's local premium tax is keyed to the actual physical address of the risk — not a mailing address and not a ZIP code — misclassifying where a risk sits is the practical compliance failure, and it is the broker who wears it.
Where this fits in a career. The honest framing is that surplus lines is a second act rather than an entry point. You cannot qualify for it before you are licensed in property and casualty, there is no exam to prepare for, and the skill it actually demands — documenting a diligent effort, tracking which local jurisdiction a risk sits in, filing four returns a year plus a March reconciliation — is administrative rather than examinable. Learn the casualty line first. The surplus lines license is a form and a fee once you have.
What It Costs
About $130 to the Commonwealth on a first-attempt pass: $50 for the examination plus $80 for the license — $40 for the resident individual agent license class and $40 for the casualty line of authority.
Adding property costs $40, not $90. Form 8304 sets the exam fee at $50 total when property and casualty are requested at the same time, so the second exam is free and only the additional line-of-authority fee applies. Both lines together run roughly $170. Pre-licensing rises from 20 hours to 40 for the pair, which is the real cost of the second line.
Beyond that: your pre-licensing course; the Administrative Office of the Courts fee for the criminal record report, unpublished; NIPR's transaction fee, unpublished; and, if you go on to surplus lines, $100 for that license and $100 at each renewal. Retakes are $50 each, unlimited inside the 120-day application window. At renewal a resident individual agent with an active insurer appointment pays $0; one without pays $40.
Eligibility Requirements
At least 18; 20 hours of approved pre-licensing education for the casualty line; 70% on the casualty examination; and an AOC criminal record report where Kentucky is your home state (KRS 304.9-105; 806 KAR 9:025). The Life guide walks the two-portal application; the Health guide covers the background report and the disclosure questions.
Every agent applicant must be financially responsible while licensed — errors-and-omissions cover of not less than $20,000 per single occurrence and $100,000 in the aggregate within one year, or a $20,000 cash surety bond, or an exclusive-agent insurer's assumption of responsibility at $20,000 per occurrence (KRS 304.9-105(1)(f)). "Not less than" makes those floors.
Kentucky grants no professional-designation waiver of either the examination or the pre-licensing hours — CPCU, ARM, CIC and the rest earn nothing here. The only exemptions in KRS 304.9-170 rest on prior licensure, and the Property & Casualty guide covers them.
Continuing Education and Renewal
Important CE details: A surplus lines broker license does not add continuing-education hours of its own, but it does depend on the underlying agent license staying current: if the property and casualty agent license lapses, KRS 304.10-120 terminates the surplus lines license with it. Letting CE slide costs two licenses, not one.
24 hours every two years, 3 of them a course concentration in ethics, counted inside the 24 (KRS 304.9-295). Up to 12 carryover hours; proof due within 60 days after your compliance date, which is the last day of your birth month in the year matching your birth year's parity.
Kentucky imposes no standalone CE mandate for workers' compensation or automobile lines, which is a genuine difference from states that ring-fence hours by product. The only product training a casualty producer is likely to meet is the 3-hour NFIP flood requirement under 806 KAR 9:025 §5(2), and that attaches to writing flood business rather than to holding the line.
The consequence of a shortfall is worth stating precisely for this line, because a casualty producer often holds more than one credential. NIPR verifies CE compliance before it will accept a renewal for the casualty line. If the license lapses and is cancelled, a surplus lines broker license terminates with it under KRS 304.10-120 — and reinstating the agent license does not automatically restore the broker license.
Renewal fees received within 60 days after expiration are accepted with a penalty and no interruption of the license. That is a different mechanism from the 12-month window to complete delinquent hours and reinstate a cancelled license without re-examination. The Property & Casualty guide keeps the two clocks apart and covers the renewal cycle in full.
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