Kentucky Property Insurance Exam 2026

What This License Is

A Kentucky property line of authority covers insurance against loss to real and personal property — dwelling and homeowners, commercial property, farm property, inland marine and the rest. It is a separate line from casualty, with its own 20-hour pre-licensing course and its own exam.

Kentucky has no combined Property & Casualty exam. That surprises producers from neighbouring states, and it is worth being precise about what Kentucky does offer instead: a combined fee. Form 8304 states that if you request the property and casualty examinations at the same time, the exam fee is $50 total rather than $100. Two exams, one fee. It is the only combined rate anywhere in Kentucky's schedule — life and health get no equivalent.

If you intend to take both, note that pre-licensing rises with you: 806 KAR 9:025 §1(1) requires 40 hours for property and casualty together, against 20 for property alone.

Exam Options & Format

The Department of Insurance writes, schedules, administers and grades this exam itself. No PSI, Pearson VUE or Prometric writes, administers or grades it, and there is no candidate handbook — KRS 304.9-160 permits the commissioner to contract with an outside testing service for examinations and Kentucky has not done so. (PSI does contract with the Department to administer continuing-education and pre-licensing provider approval, which is a separate function.) Scheduling opens in DOI eServices once your application and documents have cleared review.

70% of the questions answered correctly, a raw percentage rather than a scaled score (806 KAR 9:025 §2(5)), graded on completion. Retakes are $50 each on Form 8304, unlimited and with no waiting period, but confined to the 120 days your application stays alive.

The Department publishes its own study outline for this line rather than a vendor content outline — and it is dated April 15, 2010, built on a 2006 exam manual. Treat it as a topic map only. It predates the 2022 rebating reform, the 2023 guaranty-association amendments and the entire 2026 legislative package, so a candidate who studies only from it will be current on structure and out of date on law. What the outline does usefully confirm is that Kentucky-specific content is a defined slice of the exam, drawing on KRS 304.1, 304.9, 304.10, 304.12, 304.14, 304.20, 304.36 and 304.47 — and, distinctively, the automobile glass statute at KRS 304.9-470.

Most Tested Topics on the Kentucky Property Exam

Kentucky's property law contains two rules that reverse the national default outright, and one programme that exists almost nowhere else. That combination makes this the most state-specific of Kentucky's exams. From the TESTivity Kentucky curriculum, statute-verified:

Mine subsidence is the row to memorise word for word, because the tested detail is the direction of the default. Candidates trained on national material reason that optional coverage must be requested. Kentucky inverts it: in a participating county the coverage rides on the policy automatically, and it takes a written waiver by the insured to remove it. The insurer's discretion is narrow but not zero — KRS 304.44-040 lets it refuse on a structure with unrepaired subsidence damage until repairs are made, or where it has declined, nonrenewed or cancelled the whole policy for unrelated underwriting reasons. Notice too that county participation is a political act — a fiscal court votes the county in on an annual July 1 cycle — so the answer to "is this house covered?" turns on the county, not the carrier.

The second reversal is KRS 304.20-260. Ask most candidates about a state statute that fixes the relationship between the policy limit and the value of the building, and they will reach for valued policy law, which pays the face amount on a total loss. Kentucky's statute does the opposite job: it forbids writing more than 100% of replacement cost in the first place. It is a limit on the insurer at issuance, not a promise to the insured at settlement, and it dates from July 15, 1986.

Finally, keep the two claim clocks apart — and notice that they count in different units. 806 KAR 12:095 governs conduct, and §1(5) defines its own term: "'Days' means any day, Monday through Friday, except holidays." So acknowledge in 15 business days, pay in 30 business days of affirming liability — while the two clocks the regulation marks expressly, 30 days from proof of loss and the 45-day update letters, are calendar days. KRS 304.12-235 governs money and uses ordinary calendar days: pay within 30 days of notice and proof or the settlement carries 12% interest, with attorney's fees on top where the delay lacked reasonable foundation. A question about what an adjuster must do is the regulation; a question about what it costs is the statute.

Where You Can Sit a Kentucky Insurance Exam

Because Kentucky administers its own exams, there is no vendor network to search. The Department publishes a single document — Examination Schedule & Testing Sites, currently revised 14 July 2026 — listing fifteen locations: its own Frankfort office and fourteen regional sites, nearly all of them Kentucky Community & Technical College campuses. Every one of them carries a street address, and most carry a building and room.

The sessions are fixed, and they are not generous. This is the practical difference from a vendor state, where a test centre runs continuously and you pick a slot. Kentucky's regional sites publish specific days and specific start times, and they vary enormously. Florence runs hourly from nine to three, five days a week. Maysville tests on the first and third Tuesday of the month only. Henderson offers two Tuesday afternoon slots; Middlesboro two Tuesday morning ones. If you live near a thin site, work out whether a busier campus an hour away is actually the faster route to a seat — and pull the current schedule before you plan anything, because the Department revises it (this one changed between October 2025 and July 2026, adding a Friday at Elizabethtown and shifting Bowling Green's afternoon slots).

Booking rules. You cannot walk in: Form 8304 states in capitals that "WALKINS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO TEST WITHOUT A SCHEDULED APPOINTMENT," and the schedule repeats that walk-ins are not accepted. Requests to test at a regional site must be made at least one day before the examination date. Consultant examinations are not booked online at all — telephone the Division of Licensing on (502) 564-6004, because the Department has to warn the site about the extended three-hour sitting. Changes to an appointment should be made 24 business hours ahead, and no exam can be rescheduled for the same day. Special accommodations must be approved by Licensing before you schedule, by email to DOI.LicensingMail@ky.gov.

There is no remote option. Every Kentucky source describes in-person, appointment-based testing at these physical sites, and the Department publishes no online-proctoring pathway. If you have taken a licensing exam from your kitchen table in another state, that is not available here — and unlike states where a vendor discontinued remote testing, Kentucky never offered it, so there is no policy change to wait out. Leave your belongings in the car: the Department's own instruction is to "lock all personal belongings inside vehicle — purse, laptop, study materials, cellphones, smart watches, etc.," and no visitors are allowed inside during testing.

What It Costs

About $130 to the Commonwealth on a first-attempt pass: $50 for the examination and $80 for the license — $40 for the resident individual agent license class plus $40 for the property line of authority.

The combined rate is the arithmetic worth knowing. If you request the property and casualty exams at the same time, Form 8304 says the fee is $50 total, not $100. That makes property-plus-casualty roughly $170 all in ($50 in exam fees plus $120 in license fees for two lines) against $130 for property alone — a second line of authority for $40. If casualty is remotely plausible for your book, taking both at once is the cheapest it will ever be.

Additional and, in two cases, unpublished: your pre-licensing course (20 hours for property alone, 40 if you add casualty); the Administrative Office of the Courts fee for the criminal record report; and NIPR's transaction fee. Retakes are $50 each and unlimited inside the 120-day application window. At renewal, a resident individual agent with an active insurer appointment pays $0 and one without pays $40.

Eligibility Requirements

At least 18; 20 hours of approved pre-licensing education for the property line; 70% on the property examination; and an AOC criminal record report where Kentucky is your home state (KRS 304.9-105; 806 KAR 9:025). The Health guide covers the background report and disclosure questions; the Life guide walks the two-portal application.

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)).

Kentucky grants no professional-designation waiver — CPCU, ARM, CIC and the rest earn no exemption from either the exam or the pre-licensing hours. The only exemptions in KRS 304.9-170 rest on prior licensure, and the Property & Casualty guide covers those paths.

Continuing Education and Renewal

24 hours every two years, 3 of them a course concentration in ethics, counted inside the 24 (KRS 304.9-295), with up to 12 carryover hours into the next period and proof due within 60 days after your compliance date. That date is the last day of your birth month in the year matching your birth year's parity.

For a property producer the training that sits outside the 24 is flood. 806 KAR 9:025 §5(2) requires a resident agent holding a property and casualty line who sells flood insurance under the National Flood Insurance Program to complete three hours of training in accordance with the Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2004. The Department maintains an optional NFIP course catalogue to satisfy it.

Kentucky does not mandate standalone hours for earthquake, despite the New Madrid exposure, and it has no long-service or age-based CE exemption. Nonresidents may satisfy Kentucky CE by meeting their home state's requirement, but only on a reciprocal basis.

NIPR verifies CE compliance before it will accept a renewal submission for the property line, so a shortfall stops the renewal rather than surfacing later. The Property & Casualty guide sets out the full renewal cycle, the 60-day late window and the separate 12-month reinstatement route.

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