The Maine Property & Casualty license
One license covers the whole property-and-casualty side — homeowners and dwelling policies, personal and commercial auto, commercial package and BOP coverage, general liability, workers' compensation, crime, bonds, and umbrella. It's one of Maine's two major producer lines alongside life & health.
The path mirrors the life-and-health side: no mandatory pre-licensing hours, one combined Pearson VUE exam, and a perpetual license once you pass and apply.
Format, length, and passing score
The combined Property & Casualty exam (code 12-ME-03) is 157 questions total — 140 scored plus 17 unscored pretest items mixed throughout. Treat them all as live, because you can't tell them apart.
You get 3 hours 30 minutes, and the fee is $80. Scores are scaled 0-100 with 70 to pass. A failing report includes a numeric score and topic-level diagnostics; you can re-book after one day.
The exam is built from three blocks: Property general knowledge (50 scored), Casualty general knowledge (50 scored), and Maine-specific law and rules (40 scored).
Content breakdown
Property general knowledge (50 scored): homeowners (HO-2 through HO-8) and dwelling (DP-1 to DP-3) forms, commercial property and the commercial package policy, BOP, builders risk, inland marine, the National Flood Insurance Program; plus core terms (ACV, replacement cost, coinsurance, proximate cause) and policy provisions and contract law.
Casualty general knowledge (50 scored): commercial general liability, personal and commercial auto, workers' compensation and employers liability, crime, surety and fidelity bonds, professional liability (E&O, D&O, EPLI, cyber), and umbrella/excess; plus negligence, damages, and policy provisions.
Maine-specific law and rules (40 scored): the Superintendent's powers, licensing rules, surplus lines, the guaranty association, unfair practices, cancellation/nonrenewal, and the property-only and casualty-only chapters — the Standard Fire Policy, hurricane deductibles, auto law, and workers' comp.
Take it combined, split it, or go personal lines
Most candidates take the combined 12-ME-03 and qualify for both property and casualty in one sitting. Maine also offers each half alone: Property Producer (12-ME-43) is 80 scored questions in 2 hours at $55, and Casualty Producer (12-ME-44) is 88 scored questions in 2 hours at $55.
If you only plan to write personal auto and homeowners, there's a narrower Personal Lines license (12-ME-55) — 2 hours, $55 — that skips most of the commercial casualty material. For a full commercial book, the combined P&C is the standard choice.
What Maine adds on top of the general material
The 40 Maine-specific questions are the part national study guides miss, so weight your review here. Property side: the Maine Standard Fire Policy as the statutory baseline, and hurricane/windstorm deductible disclosure rules for coastal risks.
Casualty side: uninsured and underinsured motorist requirements, the Maine Automobile Insurance Plan (the residual market), financial-responsibility limits, excluded-household-member rules, rental and transportation-network/peer-to-peer coverage, and Maine workers' compensation law under Title 39-A.
Common to both: the Superintendent's authority, surplus-lines law, the Maine Insurance Guaranty Association, credit-scoring limits in underwriting and rating, roll-on coverages (Bulletin 143), and the personal-vs-commercial cancellation and nonrenewal rules.
Booking and exam-day logistics
Book through Pearson VUE — online at pearsonvue.com/us/en/me/insurance.html or by phone at (800) 274-4959. Reserve at least 24 hours before the date you want; Maine does not allow walk-in testing.
Pay the exam fee when you book, by credit card, debit card, or voucher. Fees are not accepted at the test center, and they are non-refundable and non-transferable except under the change/cancel policy (call 48 hours ahead to move or cancel without forfeiting).
Show up 30 minutes early with one current, government-issued, photo-bearing ID in English (driver's license, passport, passport card, military ID, or state/national ID card). Maine recognizes no grace period — an ID that expired yesterday counts as expired.
In-state centers are in Bangor and Westbrook; the nearest out-of-state options are Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts. Since May 2025 there is no remote OnVUE option, so plan to test in person.
From passing score to active license
Once you pass, apply for the license itself — passing the exam and holding the license are two separate steps. Apply online through the National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR) at nipr.com.
The Maine resident producer application-and-license fee is $25, paid through NIPR (a small NIPR transaction fee applies on top). That single fee covers the license for life — Maine resident producer licenses are perpetual with no renewal fee.
Maine runs a state and federal criminal-history records check rather than collecting fingerprints. If you answer yes to a background question, upload supporting documents through NIPR's Attachment Warehouse. Anyone subject to 18 U.S.C. 1033 must secure written 1033 consent from the Bureau before the application can be approved.
Plan on roughly three to five weeks for issuance. Once approved, you can print your license within 24-48 hours at maine.gov/insurance.
Continuing education and renewal
Maine resident producers complete 24 hours of continuing education every two-year cycle, and 3 of those hours must be ethics. Repeating the same course inside one period doesn't count twice.
Holding more than one line doesn't multiply the requirement. If you carry both Property & Casualty and the other major line, it's still 24 hours total — not 48.
Because resident licenses are perpetual, you never file a renewal or pay a renewal fee. The Bureau renews you automatically on the first business day after your CE due date, provided all 24 credits (including the 3 ethics) are reported. Miss the credits and the auto-renewal stalls until you make them up.
Some products carry their own training gates on top of CE — for example, the one-time annuity and long-term-care training required before you can sell those products.
Quick Reference
Official Links
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