What the Louisiana Casualty Line Covers
La. R.S. 22:1546 lists Casualty among Louisiana's fifteen lines of authority — auto liability, general liability, professional liability, workers' compensation, umbrella and the third-party coverages around them. It can be held alone via Series 105, or together with Property through the combined Series 106.
Louisiana is the only civil-law jurisdiction in the United States, and on the casualty side that is not a trivia point — it is load-bearing. The Civil Code, not common law, allocates fault. The statutes speak of offences and quasi-offences where a common-law state would say torts. Deadlines are prescription, not statutes of limitation. And the state's signature liability rule, the Direct Action Statute, has no real analogue anywhere else. A national study guide will teach you the general principles and leave you unprepared for the Louisiana-specific portion of this exam.
One recent change worth flagging before anything else, because it inverts a rule Louisiana held for decades. Louisiana was a pure comparative fault state — a claimant 90% at fault still recovered 10%. As of 1 January 2026, under Acts 2025 No. 15, Louisiana applies a 51% bar: a claimant who is 51% or more at fault recovers nothing. If your study material predates 2026 it will teach you the old rule, and the old rule is now wrong.
Adding the other half. Property alone is another $36 exam plus a $75 amendment. If both halves are plausible, the combined Series 106 at $58 is materially cheaper than two singles — the Property guide does the arithmetic.
And note the flood CE obligation attaches to this line. Casualty is one of the three lines — with Property and Personal Lines — that triggers Louisiana's 3-hour flood education requirement every cycle.
Exam Options & Format
The Louisiana Casualty exam is PSI Series 105 — Louisiana Examination for Casualty Insurance Producer: 100 questions in 120 minutes for $36. No pretest or unscored items are disclosed.
The passing standard is a raw 70%, printed on the outline as "Minimum Passing Score … 70% Correct" and enacted at La. R.S. 22:1545: "the applicant shall pass the examination if he achieves a score of at least seventy percent." Not a scaled score, despite PSI's practice in most other states.
Your result is immediate. The score appears on screen and a report is emailed; a failing report carries a section-level diagnostic. The Personal Lines guide covers what that report tells you, the one-year score validity, and why Louisiana's retake rules are among the most forgiving in the country.
The combined alternative is Series 106 — 150 questions in 160 minutes for $58, and note again that 160 minutes is the correct figure; the three-hour number that circulates for Series 106 is wrong.
No remote option: "Effective 7/8/24 remote testing will no longer be offered as a testing option." The Property guide covers the nine printed Louisiana test-center addresses and the two-day cancellation window.
Most Tested Topics on the Louisiana Casualty Exam
Louisiana's liability law departs from the national pattern more sharply than any other state's. These are the departures the exam tests:
| Concept | The Louisiana rule |
|---|---|
| Fault system | Tort (delict) — no no-fault, no mandatory PIP; medical payments coverage is optional (La. Civ. Code art. 2323) |
| Auto financial responsibility | 15/30/25 — $15,000 per person, $30,000 per occurrence, $25,000 property damage (R.S. 32:900(B)(2)) |
| Uninsured motorist | Must be PROVIDED at limits equal to the bodily injury limits unless the named insured rejects it in writing on the Commissioner's prescribed form (R.S. 22:1295(1)) |
| Underinsured motorist | Included with UM and rejectable on the same form (R.S. 22:1295) |
| Comparative fault | 51% bar as of 1 January 2026 (Acts 2025 No. 15) — Louisiana was previously pure comparative, with no bar at all |
| Direct Action Statute | An injured party may sue the liability insurer directly in seven enumerated situations (R.S. 22:1269) |
| No Pay, No Play | An uninsured owner forfeits the first $100,000 of bodily injury and the first $100,000 of property damage recovery (R.S. 32:866) |
| Auto residual market | The Louisiana Automobile Insurance Plan (assigned risk) (R.S. 22:1281) |
| Workers' comp — who | Mandatory from the first covered employee — no numeric minimum (R.S. 23:1031; 23:1168) |
| Workers' comp — administrator | The Office of Workers' Compensation, within the Louisiana Workforce Commission |
| Workers' comp — benefit | 66⅔% of the average weekly wage, capped at 75% of the state average weekly wage (minimum 20%) (R.S. 23:1221(1); 23:1202) |
| Workers' comp — deadlines | Notice to the employer within 30 days; claim filed within ONE year of the accident — prescription (R.S. 23:1209) |
| Claims deadlines | Pay within 30 days of satisfactory proofs of loss; initiate loss adjustment within 14 days (30 for catastrophic loss) (R.S. 22:1892) |
| Bad-faith penalty | 50% damages on the amount found due, or $1,000, whichever is greater — where the failure is "arbitrary, capricious, or without probable cause" (R.S. 22:1892) |
The Direct Action Statute is Louisiana's signature rule and the one no other state will have taught you. R.S. 22:1269 lets an injured person sue the liability insurer directly, without first obtaining a judgment against the insured — but only if at least one of seven conditions applies: the insured has filed for bankruptcy or proceedings have commenced; the insured is insolvent; service on the insured has been attempted without success or the insured refuses to defend within 180 days; the action is between children and parents or between spouses; the insurer is an uninsured motorist carrier; the insured is deceased; or the insurer is defending under a reservation of rights or has denied coverage. That last one is the practical workhorse. Note also the procedural limit: the insurer "shall not be included in the caption of any action" at the outset. An exam item that says Louisiana permits direct action against any liability insurer at any time is overstating a real rule.
No Pay, No Play is the second reliable point, and the number is $100,000 twice. Under R.S. 32:866 an owner who was driving without the compulsory insurance forfeits the first $100,000 of bodily injury damages and the first $100,000 of property damage — before any fault analysis happens. It is not a fault rule and not a comparative reduction; it is a threshold that removes the first slice of recovery entirely. Pair it with the 15/30/25 minimums, which are among the lowest in the country, and you have Louisiana's basic policy posture on auto: minimal compulsory coverage, harsh consequences for going without it. And keep the workers' compensation prescription period filed carefully — one year, where most states allow two or three, and the shortest number on this page.
Louisiana's Background Check — and the Order That Trips Everyone
Read this section before you do anything, because the single most expensive mistake in Louisiana licensing is getting fingerprinted at the wrong time. LDI's rule is absolute: "Fingerprints submitted prior to the submission of a license application AND a background check authorization form will not be accepted or reviewed." Prints taken early are not held, not queued and not refunded. You simply pay $60.75 again.
The correct sequence, in order. One: pass your PSI exam. Two: file the licence application through NIPR and submit the signed Background Check Authorization Form. Three: wait — LDI "will e-mail the individual instructions on how to schedule the fingerprint appointment or pre-enroll if mailing in hard cards," and adds the instruction in as many words: "Do not fingerprint before receiving these instructions." Four: schedule with IdentoGO. NIPR echoes the same rule from its side: "all new Resident License applicants … are required to submit a license application prior to being fingerprinted."
Who has to do it. "All first-time individual applicants for a resident insurance producer, claims adjuster, public adjuster, navigator, or insurance consultant license must be fingerprinted." First-time resident applicants, in other words — which is most people reading this.
And who does not. Nonresident applicants are exempt entirely. So are residents who are already actively licensed and are simply adding a line or a licence type — LDI: "individuals who are already actively licensed as a resident and are adding a new license type or line of authority are not required to be fingerprinted." And so is anyone reinstating within two years of a lapse. Amendments do not trigger it either. If you already hold a Louisiana Property licence and are adding Casualty, you are done — skip to the application.
The mechanics. The vendor is IdentoGO by IDEMIA. The service code is 27N339, and — unusually — it is universal rather than per-applicant: the same code identifies every LDI fingerprint applicant across all five licence types, so there is no personal code to wait for beyond LDI's email authorising you to proceed. Schedule online at uenroll.identogo.com or by phone on 1-844-539-5543. Bring one valid, non-expired photo ID from IdentoGO's accepted list. The fee is $60.75 for the combined state and federal Livescan, payable at the appointment by credit or debit card, check or money order.
Then the clocks. Results reach LDI "generally within seven to 10 days," and once returned they are valid 90 days (LDI application form, rev. 02/2026). That 90-day life is worth pairing with the other two Louisiana deadlines: your exam score is good for one year, and your application package must be complete within 30 days on NIPR's account or 90 on LDI's — the Life guide sets out that conflict. Practically, the fingerprint window is the tightest of the three once it starts running, so do not let a file sit after you have been printed.
One stale document to ignore, and it is specific to this step. PSI's internal client spec sheet for Louisiana, last modified 4 January 2021, states that "fingerprints will be captured by a PSI proctor" and "may NOT be completed at any other location outside of a PSI test center." That was true once. It is not true now: the current 1/1/2025 bulletin and every current LDI page route fingerprinting to IdentoGO, not to PSI. If someone tells you to get printed at the test center, they are working from a five-year-old sheet.
What It Costs
$36 to PSI for Series 105, $60.75 to IdentoGO, $75 to LDI through NIPR — about $171.75, with no course cost because Louisiana requires no pre-licensing.
The $60.75 is the avoidable one. Print before your application is on file and you pay it twice, for nothing. Print at the right time and, if you later add a line to an active Louisiana licence, you never pay it again — the exemption for already-licensed residents adding a line means fingerprinting is genuinely a once-per-career cost for most producers.
Adding Property afterwards is another $36 exam plus a $75 amendment, no fingerprints. That is about $282.75 for both halves by the two-singles route, against roughly $193.75 for the combined Series 106 — the Property guide lays out the comparison.
What repeats: each retake is another $36, with no waiting period. Renewal is $75 every two years with a $50 late penalty. And note that a no-show is treated as a failure under R.S. 22:1545 — reapply and remit all fees and forms before rescheduling.
Eligibility Requirements
Be at least 18, pass Series 105, file through NIPR with the signed background-check authorization, be fingerprinted when LDI instructs, and pay $75. There is no education requirement — LDI repealed Rule 9 effective 20 November 2022 under Act 273 of the 2022 Regular Session.
The fingerprint requirement is the section above, and the exemptions there are worth re-reading if you already hold a Louisiana licence.
No designation waives anything in Louisiana. CPCU, CIC, AAI, ARM and their relatives reduce neither the exam nor the CE requirement. R.S. 22:1551 is the only exam-exemption statute and its seven categories are all about prior licensure, limited lines, credit or travel — the Property & Casualty guide covers them.
If surplus lines is a long-term goal, a Casualty licence alone will not do it: Louisiana requires a Property and Casualty credential — or an Accident & Health one — held for two years. The Accident & Health guide covers that path.
Keeping Your Louisiana Casualty License Active
Important CE details: 24 hours per two-year cycle including 3 hours of ethics AND — because this is a Casualty line — 3 hours of flood education. Up to 10 excess general hours carry over, but carried-over flood and ethics credits count only as general education in the next period.
Two years, renewed on the last day of your birth month for $75 through NIPR, with the portal opening 90 days before expiration and a $50 penalty for filing late. The March 31 rule keyed to licence number applies to business entities, not individuals.
24 hours per cycle: 3 ethics, 3 flood, 18 general. Casualty is one of the three lines that triggers the flood requirement — LDI's footnote covers "property, casualty or personal lines" — and R.S. 22:1573 puts it in statute. The Property guide explains the disclosure law that flood requirement exists to support.
Carryover is capped at 10 excess general hours, and carried-over flood and ethics credits count only as general education next period — they cannot satisfy the next cycle's subject minimums. A course "may not be repeated for credit unless a minimum of 24 months have passed between course completions."
Coming with July 2027 renewals: a 2-hour legislative-updates component. Given how much Louisiana casualty law has moved recently — the comparative fault change effective January 2026, the auto cancellation notice changes effective July 2026 — that requirement is arguably overdue.
No annuity or long-term care training touches this line; those attach to Life and Accident & Health respectively. Miss the CE and the licence lapses under LDI Rule 10, reinstatable only after completing every hour that would have applied. Past two years you re-take the exams — the Property & Casualty guide sets out that ladder.
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