The Maine Property and Casualty Producer License
Maine issues Property and Casualty as two separate lines of authority on one licence - §1420-F(1)(C), "insurance coverage for the direct or consequential loss of or damage to property," and (D), "insurance coverage against legal liability." What Pearson VUE offers is a combined examination that qualifies you for both at once. There is no single "P&C licence" in the Maine statute; there is a producer licence showing two lines.
Between them the two authorities reach everything a general-lines producer places: homeowners, dwelling fire, commercial property, inland marine, personal and commercial auto, general liability, professional liability, umbrella and workers' compensation. Together they are the widest property and casualty authority Maine grants.
The narrower alternative is Personal lines at §1420-F(1)(F) - property and casualty coverage "sold to individuals and families" - which is a shorter exam and a permanently smaller book. Maine defines it by who buys rather than by what is sold, so it is genuinely narrower rather than merely easier.
This guide owns two modules for Maine: reciprocity, which covers moving in with a licence you already hold, and renewal, which covers how a licence with no expiration date is kept alive - and how it is lost.
The Combined Paper, or Two Single Lines
The combined Property and Casualty paper carries 140 scored questions in three sections: 50 Property general, 50 Casualty general, and a 40-item Maine Laws and Rules section carrying 7 pretest items - the only Maine state part whose printed parenthetical names seven, where Life's and the combined Life, Accident and Health paper's name five and several others name none at all. The single lines are Casualty at 88 scored (50 general, 38 Maine) and Property at about 80 (50 general, plus a Maine part totalling 30 on the outline's own section counts).
The Maine section is where the combined paper earns its keep. Its 40 items break down as 28 common to property and casualty, 2 pertinent to property and 10 pertinent to casualty. Sit the two single lines instead and you meet those same 28 common items twice - once inside Casualty's 38 and once inside Property's 30 - for 68 state-law questions in total. The combined paper asks 40.
That is the whole trade, and it is worth being precise about it: the combined route saves you 28 Maine-law questions and one trip to a test centre, at the cost of sitting 140 questions in a single appointment rather than 88 and 80 in two. The general knowledge does not compress - 50 plus 50 either way.
Every Maine producer paper is built from a General Knowledge part and a Maine Laws and Rules part, and the combined paper carries three sections - Property general, Casualty general, and one shared 40-item Maine section. 24-A M.R.S. §1410(6) makes a two-part examination separately passable; on a three-section paper, confirm with Pearson VUE how the parts are constituted before counting on resitting only one of them.
Passing is a scaled 70. On a 140-question paper that is not 98 right answers - the reported figure is a scaled score, "neither the number of questions you answered correctly nor the percentage of questions you answered correctly," equated across the several versions of each paper.
The counts come from content outlines #122006 (2 February 2026) and close on the outline's own arithmetic - the 40-item Maine section is 28 common to property and casualty, 2 pertinent to property and 10 pertinent to casualty. Times are not in the outlines, and the handbook defers them to its back cover, which cannot be read out of the published PDF.
Most Tested Topics on the Maine Property and Casualty Exam
The 40-item Maine section is dominated by the twenty-eight items common to both lines, and those are the regulatory ones: who regulates, what happens when an insurer fails, and what a producer may and may not do with somebody else's money. From the TESTivity Maine regulations curriculum, statute-verified:
| Concept | The Maine rule |
|---|---|
| Guaranty association, property and casualty cap | "An amount not exceeding $300,000 per claim" for all covered claims other than workers' compensation (24-A M.R.S. §4438) |
| Guaranty association, workers' compensation | Paid in full and uncapped - "the full amount of a covered claim for benefits, including interest and all penalties payable to a claimant under the Maine Workers' Compensation Act" (§4438) |
| Guaranty association, unearned premium | "An amount not exceeding $25,000 per policy," and the association pays only amounts exceeding $50 - a $50 deductible sitting underneath a $25,000 ceiling (§4438) |
| Guaranty association, cybersecurity | "An amount not exceeding $500,000 for covered claims arising out of a single insured event under a policy or endorsement of cybersecurity insurance" - a different unit of measurement from the per-claim cap above (§4438) |
| Covered claim, what is excluded | The definition does the work, and its date clause is attached to the wrong event by nearly everyone who quotes it. A covered claim excludes punitive damages; it must arise under a policy "issued by an insurer that becomes an insolvent insurer after May 9, 1970" - the clock runs on the insolvency, not on the policy's issue date, so a policy written in 1965 is covered if the carrier fails today; and it excludes a first-party claim by an insured whose net worth exceeds $25,000,000 on 31 December of the year before the insurer becomes insolvent (§4435(4)) |
| Guaranty association, filing deadline | Claims must be filed within 24 months after the order of liquidation, or by the court-set deadline, with late filings accepted for good cause (§4438) |
| The regulator | Maine has a Superintendent of Insurance, not a Commissioner, heading the Bureau of Insurance inside the Department of Professional and Financial Regulation - appointed by the Governor subject to legislative review and confirmation, for a five-year term (§201). Not an elected office |
| Rebating, and Maine's safe harbour | §2160 prohibits rebates on life, health and annuity contracts and §2162 does the same for property, casualty and surety, while §2163 makes RECEIVING a rebate illegal too - both sides of the transaction. Then §2163-A carves out what is allowed: gifts of "not more than $100 per year per person," raffle prizes "not valued in excess of $500," and neither may be cash |
| Value-added services and free services | Also permitted under §2163-A, on conditions: services related to the coverage may be free or discounted if clearly identified in the contract or directly related to servicing the policy and risk control; other free or discounted services are permitted only if receipt is not contingent on purchasing insurance, they are offered uniformly, and written disclosure is made before purchase or quote |
| Premiums are trust funds | "All premiums and return premiums received by an insurance producer are trust funds received by the licensee in a fiduciary capacity." Return premiums must be accounted for and paid to the insured, or applied to outstanding balances, within 30 days of receipt; premiums owed to the insurer are paid "promptly ... in accordance with the contract" - with no day count (§1449) |
| The premium trust account | Rule ch. 540 requires "one or more separate premium trust accounts" at a bank, savings institution or credit union, holding premiums "until actually remitted"; "under no circumstances shall an insurance producer place fiduciary funds in a personal or business operating account"; the account may not be pledged or encumbered; and the account and its cheques must carry the words "premium trust account" |
| Producer records | Kept at the place of business and "available for inspection by the superintendent for a period of at least 3 years after completion of the respective transactions" (§1447) - against 6 years of premium trust account transaction records under Rule ch. 540 §5(C) |
| Unfair claims practices, the two statutes | §2164-D is the regulatory one and creates no private cause of action; its only hard day count is "failing to provide claim forms within 15 calendar days of request." §2436-A is the one an insured may sue on, for damages, attorney's fees, costs and "interest on damages at the rate of 1.5% per month" |
Start with the guaranty caps, because Maine's are structured differently from most. The $300,000 per claim is the headline, but the interesting part is what surrounds it: workers' compensation is uncapped, unearned premium has its own $25,000 per policy ceiling with a $50 floor beneath it, and cyber claims have a $500,000 cap measured per single insured event rather than per claim. Four figures, four different units. And the $25,000,000 net-worth exclusion does not live with the money at all - it is inside the definition of "covered claim" at §4435(4), a section most candidates never open. Read that definition carefully while you are in there, because its date clause is a trap: the policy does not have to have been issued after 9 May 1970. The insurer has to have become insolvent after it.
Then the rebating numbers, because $100 and $500 are the sort of specific figures a state exam reaches for. Hold three things together: the general prohibitions in §2160 and §2162; the fact that §2163 makes the insured's acceptance of a rebate unlawful too, which surprises people; and §2163-A's safe harbour, where the gift ceiling is per person per year, the raffle ceiling is per prize, and the medium is never cash.
The fiduciary rules are the third cluster and the one with the sharpest asymmetry. §1449 gives you 30 days to get a return premium back to the insured - a hard number - and gives you no number at all for remitting premium to the insurer, only "promptly ... in accordance with the contract." So the clock runs toward the consumer and the contract runs toward the carrier. Underneath it, Rule ch. 540 sets an absolute anti-commingling rule with no de minimis threshold anywhere in it: no dollar figure, no grace days, just "under no circumstances."
Finally, keep §2164-D and §2436-A apart, because they look like the same subject and do opposite jobs. §2164-D is the Superintendent's tool: it lists the prohibited claims practices, requires either conduct "in conscious disregard" of the section or conduct frequent enough to indicate a general business practice, and says in terms that it creates no private cause of action. §2436-A is the insured's tool, with attorney's fees and 1.5% monthly interest. And note how few hard deadlines Maine puts in either: the enumerated duties run on "promptly" and "within a reasonable time," and the only fixed number is the 15 calendar days for claim forms. Maine does not use the familiar 15/15/10 grid, which makes it a reliable place for an exam writer to catch someone answering from the familiar model timetable.
Moving to Maine With a Licence You Already Hold
Maine gathers its examination waivers into one section, and the section is shorter to read than to summarise. 24-A M.R.S. §1420-H, "Exemption from examination," has three subsections and eight exemptions in total - two standing alone in subsections 1 and 2, and six lettered paragraphs, A through F, inside subsection 3. A professional designation is not among any of them.
Route one: you are licensed elsewhere right now, or were recently. An applicant currently licensed in another state for the same lines of authority and in good standing is exempt from the Maine examination - and so is an applicant whose application is received within 90 days of the cancellation of that licence. The Bureau states the same rule operationally: "As long as your current resident license is still active or has been within the last 90 days, you can apply here as a resident without taking our exam." The fee is the ordinary $25.
Route two: you have moved to Maine. §1420-H(2) covers "a person licensed as an insurance producer in another state who moves to this State," and requires that person to "make application within 90 days of establishing legal residence." Note what the section is titled and therefore what it waives: it is an exemption from examination. It does not waive continuing education - once you are a Maine resident licensee, the birth-month biennium at Rule ch. 542 applies to you like anyone else, subject to the first-biennium waiver for a compliance date falling less than a year after issue.
Route three: you were licensed in Maine before. §1420-H(3)(A) exempts an applicant who held "a similar license in this State within the past 2 years," other than a temporary licence - and it attaches four conditions, not three. The applicant must have held the licence inside the two years, must have met the applicable continuing education requirements during that period, must have voluntarily terminated the previous licence rather than lost it, and must continue to be fully qualified for the licence.
The other five exemptions are inside subsection 3 as well, and they are the limited lines. §1420-H(3)(B) exempts a limited insurance producer who solicits or sells travel insurance; (C) a resident title insurance producer "who is an attorney at law duly licensed to practice law in this State"; (D) a limited producer selling mechanical breakdown insurance; (E) a motor vehicle rental company producer; and (F) an equipment rental company producer. So the limited lines are not sitting outside the exemption section - they are five of its eight exemptions. Credit is the limited line that does still require an examination for residents, and surplus lines authority requires none.
What §1420-H does not contain is a designation waiver, and this is worth stating carefully. The section is an affirmative enumeration of eight exemptions, and CLU, ChFC, CPCU, FLMI, CIC, ARM, CFP and the rest appear nowhere among them - nor in §1410, §1420-E or Rule ch. 542. What we cannot do is tell you Maine grants no designation waiver anywhere, because no Bureau source affirmatively says so and we did not read every bulletin the Bureau has ever issued. If you hold a designation and it matters, ask Bureau licensing on (207) 624-8475 rather than assuming either way.
Nonresident licensing runs on reciprocity, and it has a condition attached. §1420-G requires the Superintendent to issue a nonresident licence to a person "currently licensed as a resident and in good standing in that person's home state" - but only where "the person's home state awards nonresident producer licenses to residents of this State on the same basis." The Superintendent may verify status through the NAIC producer database. Maine nonresident producer licences are expressly perpetual: the Bureau's words are that they have "no expiration date and no renewal fees," and a nonresident satisfies Maine's continuing education by satisfying the home state's.
If you move states in the other direction, there is a clock on you. §1420-G requires a producer who changes resident state to "file a change of address and provide certification from the new resident state within 30 days." That is not the same duty as §1419's general 30-day reporting obligation, though the number is the same - this one asks for a certification from the new state as well as the address.
A Licence That Never Expires, and How to Lose It
Maine's producer licence has no expiration date. 24-A M.R.S. §1416-A(1): "Each license issued under this chapter continues in force continuously, unless suspended, revoked or otherwise terminated by the superintendent, as long as any applicable fee set forth in section 601 is paid and education requirements for resident licensees are met by the due date." §1420-F(2) says the same thing about producer licences specifically.
For an individual resident producer there is no applicable fee. That is not an inference - the Bureau's Renewal Dates and Fees page lists individual producers by licence prefix (PRR, PRN, PLR, PLN) with "None" against both the renewal date and the renewal fee, and the CE FAQ says flatly "there is no fee to renew the license." So the licence is continued entirely by education.
And the Bureau does the renewing. Its words: licences "that are compliant for CE credits will be automatically renewed in the very early morning hours of the first calendar day following their CE due date." There is no form to file and no button to press. The one thing you must keep current is your e-mail address, because the Bureau moved its courtesy reminder - sent about six months before the deadline - to email, and §1419 makes a change of e-mail address reportable within 30 days.
Who does owe a periodic fee is worth knowing, because it is where most confusion comes from. §1416-A(2) enumerates the categories, and individual resident producers are not among them: nonresident adjusters and consultants pay by 1 January of even years; nonresident business entities by 1 April of odd years; resident adjusters by 1 October of even years; resident consultants by their own CE due date; and resident business entities by 1 December of even years. An agency therefore renews and pays - $30 resident, $70 nonresident - while the individuals inside it do not. Where a fee does apply, "failure to pay the required fees by a licensee within 90 days from the due date results in suspension or revocation."
Now the way it goes wrong. There is no grace period: "the penalty is assessed the day after the due date on any credits still outstanding," at $25 for each credit hour outstanding up to a maximum of $250. Rule ch. 542 §8 imposes the same figures as a civil penalty, and §1482 lets the Superintendent extend a deadline "for good cause shown" - which is a request to make before the date, not after it.
Then the ladder. For 60 days after your compliance date you remain licensed and may keep selling while you finish the hours. At 60 days out of compliance the licence becomes subject to suspension for 60 days (Rule ch. 542 §8), with §1484 providing the statutory hook - "the license of any insurance producer or consultant who is out of compliance with this subchapter for at least 60 days is subject to suspension or revocation" - routed through §1420-K(1)(B). During a suspension you may not sell, solicit or negotiate any business, though you may keep taking courses. A licensee still out of compliance when the suspension ends has the licence terminated.
Two ways back, and only one of them avoids the exam. A lapsed licence may be reinstated within 12 months without re-examination under §1420-F(3): "An individual insurance producer whose license lapses may, within 12 months, reinstate the same license without the necessity of passing a written examination." A licence cancelled for CE non-compliance is a different matter - the Bureau's own guidance is to "retake the licensing exam, fill out a new application and pay the regular licensing fees," and it notes that the old outstanding credits and the old penalties do not carry over into the new licence.
Those two provisions sit in tension and the Bureau has not published a reconciliation, so treat the boundary between them as the thing to ask about rather than the thing to assume. What is clear: voluntary termination with credits outstanding is cured by a new application, the outstanding credits and the penalties; and a licence cancelled at the end of a CE suspension requires the examination again. If you are somewhere between the two, Bureau licensing is on (207) 624-8475.
One more way to lose it that has nothing to do with CE. §1419's 30-day reporting duties are enforceable, and §1420-K(1) makes violating "any rule, regulation, subpoena or order of the superintendent" a ground for suspension or revocation in its own right. A producer who keeps their credits current and their reporting stale is not safe.
What the Maine Property and Casualty License Costs
$25 to the Bureau for both lines - $15 application, $10 licence - plus the Pearson VUE examination fee. Because Maine prices per licence rather than per line, the combined authority costs exactly what a single line costs.
The examination fee is the one number Maine does not publish anywhere: not in handbook #122000, which contains no dollar amount at all, and not on any Bureau page. Pearson VUE quotes it at reservation on (800) 274-4959.
Then nothing, indefinitely. This is the unusual part of the Maine programme and it is worth stating in money terms. Over ten years a Maine individual resident producer pays the Bureau $25 once - no biennial renewal, no continuation fee, no late-renewal tier. What Maine charges instead is time: 24 credit hours every two years, five cycles over that decade.
The only recurring bills are the ones you create. Continuing education courses are bought from approved providers at market rates. A $25 penalty per outstanding credit hour, capped at $250, is charged if you miss the deadline. A duplicate paper licence is $10 and so is a letter of certification. Surplus lines authority, if you add it, is $165 plus a surety bond.
And the one bill that is not yours. Appointments cost $30 per producer per insurer every two years and are invoiced to the insurer on the carrier's own anniversary cycle - companies first licensed January to June renew in even years, July to December in odd years, with payment due within 30 days of the invoice. Agency appointments are $0. And no appointment is needed to hold the licence at all.
Eligibility Requirements
24-A M.R.S. §1420-E asks four things: age 18, no act amounting to a ground under §1420-K, fees paid, and "successfully passed the examinations for the lines of authority for which the person has applied." Taking Property and Casualty together costs the same $25 as taking one of them, because Maine charges per licence rather than per line.
No pre-licensing education is required, and that has been true since 2007. Maine's remaining education requirement is continuing education after licensure, not coursework before it. The Life guide sets out the repealed-statute-versus-live-rule wrinkle for anyone who runs into it.
§1420-K(1) is worth reading before you answer the application's background questions, because the fourteen grounds reach further than criminal history. Paragraph (A) covers "providing incorrect, misleading, incomplete or materially untrue information in the license application" - so the answers themselves are an independent ground. Paragraph (K) covers "improperly using reference materials during a license examination." Paragraphs (M) and (N) reach failure to comply with a child support order and failure to pay state income tax. None of these depends on a conviction.
And there is a criminal offence attached to the far end of it. §1412 bars a person whose licence has been revoked, suspended, denied or surrendered from participating "in any manner in the conduct of an insurance business entity" or deriving compensation based on its operation. Violation is a Class E crime carrying a fine of $100 to $1,000 and up to 6 months' imprisonment. Relicensing after revocation runs through §1418.
If you are arriving in Maine with a licence already in hand, none of this is the relevant question - the Moving to Maine section below sets out the three statutory exemptions from examination at §1420-H and the ninety-day clock that governs two of them.
Continuing Education for the Maine Property and Casualty License
Important CE details: 24 hours per biennium including 3 ethics, keyed to birth month and birth-year parity, with the provider filing your completion inside 30 days. Home study is capped at 16 of the 24 without a proctored closed-book examination, and surplus hours are lost rather than carried forward.
24 credit hours every two years, at least 3 of them ethics - and the number comes from a rule rather than the statute. 24-A M.R.S. §1482 requires completion "every 2 years" in programs "approved by the superintendent" and caps the requirement at "not to exceed 30 hours"; the Superintendent set 24 by Rule ch. 542. Anyone quoting Maine at 30 hours has read the ceiling.
Holding four lines costs the same as holding one. The 24 hours attach to the licensee, not to the licence's lines of authority, so a producer with Property, Casualty, Life and Accident and Health owes exactly what a Property-only producer owes. Neither Property nor Casualty carries a product-specific training gate; Maine's two - long-term care and annuities - both sit on the life and health side.
Courses are approved one at a time, by practitioners. §1483 requires each course to be approved or disapproved by the Superintendent "subject to prior review and nonbinding recommendations of the Continuing Education Advisory Committee," whose six members are appointed to three-year terms and must each be "an active, full-time insurance producer or consultant." The Bureau runs a searchable course list, and its approvals "remain effective, unless terminated," so a course approved last year is generally still good this year.
A course approval is narrower than it looks. Rule ch. 542 §5 provides that "a course approval is valid only if it is given as described in the application" - so a classroom course delivered as a webinar, or a shortened version of an approved syllabus, is not the approved course. Mixed content may earn "credit at a reduced rate reflecting the proportion of qualifying content."
The consequences of missing the date - the penalty, the sixty days, the suspension and what happens afterwards - are set out in the Renewal and Reinstatement section above, which is where this guide keeps Maine's renewal machinery.
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