The Maryland Personal Lines Producer License
Maryland lists Personal Lines as a separately bookable licence with its own exam code - 2029, series 20-29 - in the "Types of Licenses" table on page 2 of the Prometric bulletin. You sit the genuine single-line paper. You are not routed onto the combined Property and Casualty exam and then restricted afterwards.
The territory this licence works in has a statutory definition worth learning on day one, because the exam tests it directly. "Personal insurance" at Ins. Section 27-601(c)(1) is property or casualty insurance issued to an individual, trust, estate or similar entity "intended to insure against loss arising principally from the personal, noncommercial activities of the insured." That is the fence. Section 27-601(b)(1) puts on the other side of it any policy issued to a sole proprietor, partnership, corporation or LLC "intended to insure against loss arising from the business pursuits of the insured entity."
Then Section 27-601(c)(2) takes a large bite out of your own side of the fence. "Personal insurance" expressly does not include private passenger motor vehicle liability policies governed by Section 27-613, Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund policies, Joint Insurance Association policies, or surety insurance. So the family car, which is unmistakably a personal risk in ordinary language, is not "personal insurance" for the purposes of this subtitle. It has its own section, with its own clocks and its own mailing rule.
Entry is short. Be 18 (Ins. Section 10-104). Pass the exam. Apply and pay $54. Pre-licensing education was repealed effective October 1, 2024 by Chapter 874/873 of 2024, announced in MIA Bulletin 24-19: applicants "will no longer be required to complete a program of study that has been established or approved by the Commissioner, nor meet minimum experience requirements prior to taking the examination." The exam requirement itself survives untouched.
One boundary question that comes up constantly and has an unsatisfying answer: no rule exempting a Personal Lines applicant who already holds Property and Casualty appears anywhere in Maryland's published materials. The bulletin, the MIA Producer FAQ and NIPR's Maryland page were all searched for one and none carries it. Several other states publish such a rule. If you are relying on one here, confirm it with the MIA before you skip a paper.
Personal Lines Alone, or the Combined P&C Paper
Both are bookable, and here is the thing that decides it for most candidates: the fee is $62 either way.
| Paper | Code | Questions | Time | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal Lines | 2029 (series 20-29) | 100 scored plus 10 unscored = 110 | 2 hr 15 min | $62 |
| Property and Casualty Producer - Combo | 2032 (series 20-32) | 120 scored plus 10 unscored = 130 | 2 hr 30 min | $62 |
| Property Producer | 2031 (series 20-31) | 80 scored plus 10 unscored = 90 | 1 hr 45 min | $62 |
| Casualty Producer | 2026 (series 20-26) | 80 scored plus 10 unscored = 90 | 1 hr 45 min | $62 |
Of the five single-line papers Maryland prints - Life (2027), Accident and Health or Sickness (2024), Property (2031), Casualty (2026) and Personal Lines (2029) - Personal Lines is the longest, at 100 scored questions where the other four carry 80, and 2 hours 15 minutes where they get 1 hour 45. That works out at roughly 74 seconds a question, which is not tight, but the paper is a genuine twenty questions longer than the other four and candidates who have paced themselves against a Property or Casualty practice test are usually surprised by the back third.
The arithmetic on which to sit. Twenty more scored questions and fifteen more minutes buys you the whole commercial side as well - and the same $62. If a contractor, a rental portfolio or a small business is anywhere in your plan, code 2032 is the better purchase, because adding a line later means another $62 exam and another wait for the MIA to process it. If your book is households, the shorter paper is a real saving in study time and the licence covers it.
Spanish-language versions exist for every Maryland line, codes 2043 through 2053, at the same $62. Personal Lines is 2049, Lineas Personales. Most competitor material omits this entirely.
One caution on the unscored questions. The counts in the table above come from the per-exam content outlines, which say "plus 10 unscored." The bulletin's own Experimental Questions section on page 9 says candidates see 5. Nobody reconciles them - the conflict is set out in full in the results section below. Either way you cannot identify them while you sit, so answer everything.
Where the specifications actually live is worth knowing if you go looking. The bulletin does not contain the content outlines; page 12 says only that "you can access your outlines by going to the Prometric website." Question counts and time limits live in separate per-exam outline PDFs, and the 70% passing standard lives in a third document, the Maryland Insurance Exam FAQ. Three documents, three facts - which is how candidates end up with two of the three.
Most Tested Topics on the Maryland Personal Lines Exam
The Maryland section of this paper leans hard on one subject: what an insurer may do to a household policy, and how much warning it owes. Maryland splits that across Title 27, Subtitle 6 by line, and the section numbers are adjacent without being related - Sections 27-602, 27-603, 27-613 and 27-614 are four different subjects sitting next to each other. Add the underwriting-period rule at Section 12-106 and the underwriting prohibitions at Section 27-501 and you have most of the state-specific items on the exam. Statute-verified:
| Concept | What Maryland does | Where it's written |
|---|---|---|
| Section routing, personal insurance versus private passenger auto | Four adjacent sections, four different subjects: 27-602 is personal insurance, 27-603 is commercial, 27-613 is private passenger auto cancellation, nonrenewal and reduction of coverage, and 27-614 is a premium increase, which is not a cancellation subject at all. The definitions section does the routing: "personal insurance" does not include motor vehicle liability policies under Section 27-613, MAIF policies, Joint Insurance Association policies, or surety | Ins. Sections 27-601(c)(2), 27-602, 27-603, 27-613, 27-614 |
| Underwriting period, new personal lines policy | 45 days. The notice statutes simply do not apply to a policy in effect 45 days or less. Inside the window the insurer may recalculate premium on discovering incorrectly recorded or undisclosed risk factors, with written notice showing "the amount of the recalculated premium" and "the reason for the increase or reduction"; cancellation inside the window runs 15 days after mailing, or 10 days for nonpayment | Ins. Section 12-106; Sections 27-602(a)(2), 27-613(a)(3) |
| Cancellation and nonrenewal notice, personal insurance | At least 45 days before the proposed cancellation or the expiration date, written notice to the named insured by a first-class mail tracking method, with proof of mailing kept in a USPS-authorized form. Notice given by a producer on the insurer's behalf counts as the insurer's notice, and no notice is required if the insured has already replaced the insurance | Ins. Section 27-602(c)(1)-(4) |
| Nonpayment cancellation notice, personal lines | 10 days, not 45, by first-class mail tracking method - and the same 10 days on the auto side. This is the one clock that is identical across Sections 27-602 and 27-613 | Ins. Sections 27-602(d), 27-613(d) |
| Mail method, auto cancellation notice | CERTIFIED MAIL for a cancellation or nonrenewal; a first-class mail tracking method for every other action the section covers, including a reduction in coverage. Sections 27-602 and 27-603 draw no such distinction - they use first-class mail tracking throughout. The method turns on the type of action, not the type of policy | Ins. Section 27-613(c)(1)(i)-(ii) |
| Midterm cancellation grounds, homeowner's policy | Exclusive, and short: material misrepresentation or fraud in connection with the application, the policy or the presentation of a claim; a matter or issue related to the risk constituting a threat to public safety; a change in the condition of the risk resulting in an increase in the hazard insured against; nonpayment; and, for homeowner's insurance only, conviction of arson. Commercial and auto instead add licence or registration revocation for driving-record reasons | Ins. Sections 27-602(c)(5), 27-613(b)(3) |
| Statement of actual reason, auto cancellation notice | The reason goes in the notice proactively, with prescribed minimum detail - driver's name and date for an accident, a description of each claim for claims history. The statute then names four phrases that will not do: "The use of generalized terms such as 'personal habits', 'living conditions', 'poor morals', or 'violation or accident record' does not meet the requirements of this paragraph." But nonmaterial typos, surplus information and erroneous information that leaves a sufficient basis standing do not void the notice | Ins. Section 27-613(c)(4)(i)-(iii) |
| Weather-related claims as a cancellation basis, homeowner's | Presumptively unusable, with two independent routes past it. (i)(1): a weather claim may be combined with other factors where there were 3 or more weather-related claims in the preceding 3 years. (i)(2), separately: an insurer may consider weather claims regardless of the count where it sent the insured a repair notice that was ignored and that would have prevented the loss - which COMAR requires to have followed an inspection and to have been mailed at least 60 days before the weather event | Ins. Sec. 27-501(i)(1), (i)(2); COMAR 31.15.10.02B-D |
| Not-at-fault claims history, private passenger auto | No cancellation or nonrenewal on claims history where two or fewer claims in the preceding 3 years were for losses the insured was not at fault for. Note carefully: "not at fault" is not a defined term in Section 27-501 or in COMAR 31.15.10.01 - do not answer as though it were | Ins. Section 27-501(k) |
| Credit history in underwriting, homeowner's versus auto | The asymmetry is the point. Homeowner's: a total prohibition - not for underwriting, cancellation, nonrenewal, rating, tiering, providing or removing a discount, placement with an affiliate, or setting a payment plan. Auto: narrower - no refusal to underwrite, cancel, nonrenew or increase a renewal premium on credit history, but credit remains usable in rating new business | Ins. Section 27-501(e-2) |
| "Increase in premium" as a defined term, private passenger auto | A defined term that reaches further than candidates expect: an increase in total premium due to a surcharge, retiering or other reclassification, or the removal or reduction of a discount. Losing a discount is a premium increase. At least 45 days' written notice is owed on any increase in total premium - the only carve-out is a general increase filed under Title 11 that does not result from reclassifying the insured | Ins. Section 27-614(a), (c)(1)-(2) |
| Protest and stay, cancellation versus premium increase | Both protests run 30 days from the mailing date, and there the resemblance ends. A protest of an auto cancellation stays the action, and the insurer must maintain the same coverage at the same premium pending final determination. A protest of a premium increase does not stay it. A stay of an increase requires more than 15% plus findings of undue harm and a rating-plan violation - and the hearing right itself exists only above 15%. Disallowed premium comes back within 30 days with 10% annual interest, rising to 20% from the 31st day | Ins. Sections 27-613(f)(4)-(5), 27-614(d)(1), (d)(3), (d)(6), (f)(1)-(2) |
| Premium paid to the producer, nonpayment cancellation | An insurer may not cancel for nonpayment where the premium was paid to the producer. Payment to the producer is payment to the insurer - a rule that turns a routine remittance failure into an unlawful cancellation | Ins. Section 10-127 |
Start with the routing, because everything else hangs off it. A national prep course teaches "personal lines cancellation" as one topic with one set of notice days. Maryland does not have one topic. It has a definitions section that expels the family car from "personal insurance" and sends it to Section 27-613, and once you accept that, the differences stop looking arbitrary. Section 27-613 covers reduction of coverage as well as cancellation and nonrenewal - Section 27-602 does not. Section 27-613 demands certified mail for a cancellation or nonrenewal and first-class tracking for everything else - Section 27-602 uses first-class tracking throughout. Section 27-613 gives the insured a protest that stays the action; the premium-increase section next door gives a protest that does not. An item that offers you "certified mail" as the answer for a homeowner's nonrenewal is testing exactly this, and the answer is no.
Then learn the three numbers that are not 45. The 45-day notice is the headline and it is also the least discriminating fact on the page, because it applies to cancellation and nonrenewal on both sides. The scoring answers are the others: 10 days for nonpayment, 45 days as the underwriting window during which none of this applies at all, and 15 days after mailing for a cancellation inside that window under Section 12-106. Candidates who have memorised only "45 and 10" get caught by the third.
The two claims-history rules are the most-missed items on this paper, and they fail in opposite directions. On the homeowner's side, the trap is thinking the 3-in-3-years threshold is the whole rule. It is not the whole rule - but the repair notice is a second, independent doorway, not an extra lock on the first. § 27-501(i)(1) lets an insurer combine a weather claim with other factors where there were three or more in three years; § 27-501(i)(2) separately lets it consider weather claims regardless of the count where it sent a repair notice the insured ignored, and COMAR requires that notice to have followed an inspection and gone out at least 60 days before the weather event itself. A repair notice mailed after the hailstorm does nothing. On the auto side, the trap is the direction of the count: two or fewer not-at-fault claims in 3 years cannot support a cancellation or nonrenewal, which means the protection runs out at the third. And "not at fault" carries no statutory definition in Maryland, so an item that asks you to apply a bright-line fault test is asking for something the statute does not supply.
Finally, the two places where the word tests better than the number. "Increase in premium" at Section 27-614(a) includes removing a discount - so a household that loses a multi-policy credit at renewal is owed a 45-day notice even though nothing was surcharged, and a candidate answering from the national assumption that "increase" means "surcharge" will get it wrong. And the four banned phrases at Section 27-613(c)(4)(ii) are quoted, not paraphrased, in the statute: personal habits, living conditions, poor morals, violation or accident record. Learn them as a list of four. Then remember the counterweight in the very next subparagraph - the Commissioner may not disallow an action over nonmaterial typographical errors or surplus information where a sufficient basis remains without it. Maryland polices vagueness, not sloppiness.
Your Result, the 70%, and the Two Things Maryland Never Publishes
Maryland's results process is quick, and it is a raw percentage rather than the scaled score most national handbooks describe. Here is the whole sequence, including the parts no source will tell you.
You see your result on screen when you finish. Prometric reports the outcome at the end of the exam, follows it with a score report by email, and posts it to scorereports.prometric.com, which is where to go when the email does not arrive or you need the report again later.
The standard is 70%, and in Maryland that is a plain percentage. The Maryland Insurance Exam FAQ says it in one line: "To achieve a passing score on the exam, you must receive a 70% or higher." This matters more than it sounds, because it is where Maryland parts company with a large number of other states. Handbooks in scaled-score states carry a diagnostic sentence telling candidates the reported number "is neither the number nor the percentage of questions answered correctly." That phrase does not appear in Maryland's bulletin. There is no equating, no form-difficulty adjustment and no conversion table to reason about. Seventy percent means seventy percent.
What Maryland does not say is which denominator. The Personal Lines paper is 100 scored questions plus 10 unscored, and nothing in the bulletin, the FAQ or the content outline states whether the 70% is measured against the 100 scored items or against all 110. The two readings give different targets. So do not walk into the centre with a number-correct goal, and be sceptical of any prep site that quotes you one - it is arithmetic performed on an assumption, not a published fact.
The unscored count is itself disputed. The bulletin's Experimental Questions section on page 9 says candidates see 5 experimental questions. Every per-exam content outline, including Personal Lines, says "plus 10 unscored." The outline totals are internally consistent at 100 plus 10 equals 110, which leans toward 10 - but that is inference, not a source, and Prometric has not reconciled the two documents. Report it as a conflict, because that is what it is. Practically it changes nothing on the day: unscored items are not identified, so answer every question as though it counts.
If you failed: four days, then rebook. The bulletin is blunt about it - "If you fail an exam, you can't take the same exam for four days." You rebook through the normal channel, at myaccount.prometric.com/login/MDINS/MDINS or on 1-800-610-1174, and you pay the full $62 again. There is no reduced retake rate.
On attempt limits, the honest answer is that Maryland publishes none. The bulletin states the four-day restriction and stops there. That is not the same as saying attempts are unlimited, and you should not treat it as a licence to grind. A cap could exist in practice without being printed; what is verifiable is only that no published Maryland source states one.
Two genuine gaps you should plan around rather than rely on:
| The gap | What is actually published | How to plan around it |
|---|---|---|
| How long a passing score stays valid | Nothing. No Prometric or MIA source states a validity window for a Maryland producer exam result | Treat the pass as perishable and file promptly. Many states run 90 days to a year; Maryland has not said, so do not budget on any of those numbers |
| Any deadline between passing and applying | Nothing. The bulletin was checked twice with differently worded prompts and states no deadline | Same answer, same reason. The safe assumption is the conservative one |
Neither gap is a finding that Maryland is generous. It is a finding that Maryland is silent, and silence is the thing to protect yourself against. If your circumstances make a delay unavoidable, ask the MIA Producer Licensing Unit directly at producerlicensing.mia@maryland.gov before you let months pass on an unfiled result.
If you passed, the order of operations is fixed: exam first, then application. Bulletin page 11: "Once you have passed your license exam (if an exam is required), you must submit your license application along with any other required documents and your fee." NIPR enforces this operationally - it "verifies exams prior to allowing submission of an application", so the portal will simply block a submission filed before your result has propagated.
Allow processing time before you file. When a licensed producer adds a line by examination, the MIA says it takes 2 to 3 business days to process the exam results. That figure is published in the add-a-line context, and it is a sensible minimum to allow on an initial application too rather than filing the same afternoon and watching it bounce.
There is an Appeals Process. The bulletin devotes a section to it on page 10. Its contents are not reproduced here because they were not extracted - if you believe something went wrong with the administration of your exam rather than with your preparation for it, read that page before you rebook, since a rebooking may foreclose the point.
And a retake strategy for the four days. Four days is short enough that it is genuinely a study window rather than a break. On the Personal Lines paper the state-specific material is the highest-yield place to spend it: the Title 27, Subtitle 6 clocks, the certified-mail split at Section 27-613(c)(1), the exclusive midterm grounds, and the two claims-history rules at Section 27-501(i) and (k). Those are finite, they are enumerable, and they are the twenty questions between a 68 and a 74.
What It Costs
Two payments, two payees. $62 to Prometric for the Personal Lines paper and $54 to the MIA through NIPR, plus NIPR's transaction fee at checkout.
There is nothing else to buy. The pre-licensing course was repealed on October 1, 2024, and the MIA now tells candidates in terms that they "may find their own insurance exam preparation courses or they may order their own study materials" - the provider roster went inactive on September 30, 2024 and the MIA no longer publishes one. The MIA fee schedule itemises every other producer fee and carries no fingerprint line, which is the strongest evidence available that there is no background-check charge to budget for.
Budget the retake, not the licence. A second attempt is another full $62 after the four-day wait. Since the combined Property and Casualty paper (code 2032) costs the identical $62 for 120 scored questions and an extra fifteen minutes, the only real price difference between the two credentials is study time.
Worth checking before you pay Prometric rather than after: the bulletin's first page notes that veterans who sit certain Maryland insurance examinations can be reimbursed up to $2,000 for each exam under the GI Bill, and that dependents of disabled veterans may also qualify. It reimburses the exam fee; it does not waive the exam and it does not cover the $54 licence fee.
Eligibility Requirements
Be at least 18 (Ins. Section 10-104), pass the Personal Lines examination, and file the application with the $54 fee. There is no coursework prerequisite and no minimum experience requirement - both were repealed effective October 1, 2024.
Background review runs through the application's disclosure questions, not through a print scan. The bulletin's only background text is procedural: "If you answer 'Yes' to a background question on the application, submit your written statement accompanied by corresponding court documents." A disclosure means a written explanation plus the court paperwork, filed with the application rather than chased afterwards.
File through NIPR at nipr.com. A paper alternative exists by mail to the Maryland Insurance Administration, ATTN: Producer Licensing Unit, 200 St. Paul Place, Suite 2700, Baltimore, Maryland 21202. Note that Sircon is continuing education only in Maryland - it does not take applications, which catches out producers who have used it for CE in another capacity. The Life guide walks the application step by step.
If you are moving to Maryland already licensed, there is a 90-day relocation waiver that can take the exam out of this sequence entirely - and one of its two paths is paper-only, so filing online defeats it. The Property and Casualty guide covers reciprocity in full, and the Life and Health guide covers the waiver landscape, including the fact that Credit, Travel, Variable Life and Variable Annuity are lines Maryland licenses with no exam at all.
Exam day itself: one non-expired, U.S. government-issued, photo- and signature-bearing ID whose name exactly matches your registration, arrival at least 30 minutes early, and 24 hours' notice to reschedule or cancel without forfeiting the fee. The Life and Health guide owns the exam-day detail. Maryland exams are also available remotely - the bulletin says you may test "at any Prometric test center in The United States or in a remotely proctored location" - and the Accident and Health or Sickness guide covers the ProProctor route. The Property guide covers test centres, which Maryland surfaces at booking rather than publishing as a list.
Keeping the License
Important CE details: 24 credit hours every two years including 3 hours of ethics, keyed to your birth month, and carry over hours are not allowed. Maryland also runs reduced variants and legacy exemptions a personal lines producer should recognise: a title-only licensee owes 16 hours (13 Title plus 3 Ethics), a Funeral Director limited to life owes 16 (13 L/H plus 3 Ethics), producers aged 70 or over as of April 30, 2013 are exempt entirely under MIA Bulletin 13-07, and producers who as of October 1, 2008 had held a licence for 25 or more consecutive years owe only 8 hours per period under Bulletin 13-10. Both legacy categories are closed to new qualifiers, so neither is a route out of the 24 for anyone licensing today.
24 hours every two years, 3 of them ethics, on a cycle keyed to your birth month. Individual licences expire on the last day of the month in which you were born - that is statutory, not administrative practice: Ins. Section 10-115(d) says "a license renewed under this section shall have an expiration date that is the last day of the month in which the holder of the license was born." Business-entity licences instead run two years from the date of issuance, which is how the apparent conflict between the MIA and NAIC on this point resolves - both are right, for different licensee types.
The deadline is 15 days, and the advice is 30. Ins. Section 10-116(a)(2): "An insurance producer shall complete the continuing education required under paragraph (1) of this subsection not later than 15 days before the expiration date of the insurance producer's license." The MIA separately recommends "that all Continuing Education requirements be met thirty (30) days prior to license expiration to allow ample processing time." Both numbers are real. The 15 days is the statutory answer and the testable one; the 30 days is the one that keeps your licence alive, because providers have up to 10 days to report a completion and a course finished on day 16 may not post until day 6.
Carry over hours are not allowed - the MIA says so affirmatively, so a heavy year does not bank credit for a light one. Duplicate courses do not count twice within the same renewal period nor within 6 months.
Two vendors, and they do different jobs. Prometric is the MIA's continuing education vendor as well as its exam vendor, so you meet the same company at both ends of your licence. Sircon at sircon.com holds the CE transcript and the approved-course lookup.
On product-specific gates, read the MIA index rather than assuming. The MIA's "Producer Continuing Education Credit Requirements" enumerates five gates, two of which attach to producers licensed to sell property and casualty insurance: 2 hours in a course designated Flood and, for a producer who "sells, solicits, or negotiates bail bonds," 4 hours designated Bail Bond - both stated as part of the P/C hours rather than on top of them. The index does not say that any line lacks a gate, so do not read Personal Lines as exempt by omission; check the current index before your cycle closes. The Property and Casualty guide carries the CE and renewal detail in full, including the late-renewal tiers, the $100 late fee and the point at which a lapsed licence sends you back to Prometric for the exam again.
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