What This License Is
A Massachusetts Property line of authority lets you sell insurance on real and personal property against loss or damage — homeowners, fire and allied lines, commercial property, inland marine. It is issued by the Division of Insurance.
It stands alone by design. Massachusetts offers no combined Property & Casualty exam: the handbook's fee table lists Property and Casualty as separate producer exams at $37 each. Full P&C authority in this state means two sittings. If your book is personal-lines only, there is a third path — the separate Personal Lines exam, which is its own 105-question exam rather than a subset you can test into.
One cost note that surprises everyone: because the licence carries Property authority, the fee is $300 for the three-year term rather than $225. The $75 difference is a statutory lead paint surcharge, and it attaches once per licence term whether you hold Property alone or Property, Casualty and Personal Lines together.
Exam Options & Format
The Property Producer exam is 80 scored questions plus 10 unscored pretest items — 50 scored general-knowledge and 30 scored Massachusetts-specific — at $37 through Pearson VUE.
Three routes are worth comparing before you book. Property alone ($37) covers property risks. Property plus Casualty (two exams, $74) is full P&C authority. Personal Lines ($37, one exam) is the narrower licence for producers writing only personal auto, homeowners and personal umbrella — a bigger exam at 105 scored questions, but a single sitting. Notably, full P&C authority already includes personal-lines risks — so Personal Lines is a narrower alternative to it, not a partial credit toward it. Neither exam counts toward the other.
The passing standard is a scaled score of 70 — and that is not the same thing as 70% correct. The handbook is blunt about it: the reported score "is neither the number of questions answered correctly nor the percentage of questions answered correctly." Raw answers are converted onto a common scale so that a slightly harder form is not a harder pass.
Massachusetts does not publish a time limit. The handbook describes how the on-screen clock behaves and then says the number of questions and the time limit "can be found in the exam's content outline" — but the published outlines carry topic weightings and question counts, not minutes. Treat any site quoting you a Massachusetts exam duration as quoting the old Prometric handbook. Your actual limit is confirmed when you book and shown on screen when you sit down.
The old Prometric code 16-53 is dead. The current handbook publishes no series numbers at all — you book "Producer - Property" by name.
Most Tested Topics on the Massachusetts Property Exam
Massachusetts property law has a particular shape: a competitive rate environment, a coastal catastrophe profile, a FAIR Plan that matters more than in most states, and a surplus-lines regime with real procedural teeth. These are the state-section facts:
| Concept | The Massachusetts rule |
|---|---|
| Property rate regulation | Competitive, file-and-use — insurers file rates with the Division, which may not be excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory (c. 174A §§ 5–6). Private passenger auto is different: managed competition since 2008 |
| FAIR Plan | The Massachusetts Property Insurance Underwriting Association (MPIUA) — the residual market and insurer of last resort for residential property (c. 175C) |
| FAIR Plan eligibility | Residential property located in Massachusetts, with the applicant certifying that a reasonable effort to obtain insurance elsewhere was made and failed; the property must be maintained, not vacant or condemned, and free of outstanding tax liens |
| FAIR Plan perils | Fire and smoke, vandalism and theft, limited liability, windstorm or hail, collapse from snow or ice, vehicle or aircraft damage — flood is excluded |
| Dominant catastrophe perils | Coastal wind and hurricane, concentrated on Cape Cod and the Islands, plus nor'easters and winter storms. Massachusetts is a coastal, non-earthquake exposure |
| Credit scoring | Prohibited outright in private passenger auto — an insurer may not use credit history to underwrite or rate auto (c. 175 § 4E). No comparable statutory ban was located for homeowners |
| Surplus lines prerequisite | A separate special (surplus lines) broker licence issued by the Commissioner — a producer licence alone does not let you place non-admitted business (c. 175 § 168) |
| Surplus lines diligent effort | A documented diligent effort to place the risk in the admitted market first, evidenced by affidavit within 20 days; exempt commercial risks are excused. A 4% premium tax applies |
| Surplus lines and the safety net | Surplus lines placements are not protected by the Insolvency Fund. If the non-admitted carrier fails, there is no guaranty backstop — a disclosure point as much as an exam point |
| Pre-insurance inspection | Any private passenger policy including physical damage coverage requires an inspection within 10 calendar days, or that coverage is suspended at 12:01 a.m. on the eleventh day until the inspection happens. A new, unused vehicle from a franchised dealer is waived on the bill of sale, RMV Form 1 and the window sticker (211 CMR 94.00) |
The pre-insurance inspection rule is the one that separates candidates who studied Massachusetts from candidates who studied insurance. It is triggered by physical damage coverage, not by liability; the consequence is automatic suspension of the physical damage coverage only, not cancellation of the policy; and the clock is 10 calendar days, not business days. Get all three parts and the question is free.
The surplus-lines rows reward the same care. The exam likes the sequence: you must already hold the special broker licence, you must make and document the diligent effort before placing the risk, and the affidavit follows within 20 days. And the consumer consequence — no Insolvency Fund protection — is the reason the procedure exists, which is exactly how test questions tend to frame it.
Massachusetts Test Centers and How Scheduling Works
Since July 22, 2026, every Massachusetts insurance examination is delivered by Pearson VUE, and every one of them is delivered in person. Remote proctoring was discontinued at the transition: the handbook states that remote testing "will no longer be offered" and that all candidates must test at an authorised Pearson test centre. If you were counting on testing from home, that option no longer exists here.
How many centres, and where. Pearson reports approximately 29 test centres within Massachusetts, plus about 97 locations in neighbouring states and access to more than 300 nationwide. Coverage is dense around Greater Boston and the I-495 belt, with sites in the Worcester area, the Springfield and Pioneer Valley region, the Merrimack Valley, the South Shore and southeastern Massachusetts, and on the Cape.
Why we do not print addresses. The candidate handbook has a "Test Center Locations" heading and then deliberately sends candidates to the website rather than printing a list — because centres open, close and relocate between handbook revisions. Any site publishing a fixed Massachusetts address list is publishing something that will be wrong before it is old. Use Pearson's locator at the time you book, and note that a centre in southern New Hampshire or northern Rhode Island may genuinely be closer than the nearest Massachusetts site — cross-border testing is allowed.
Booking. Schedule online through Pearson VUE's Massachusetts insurance portal or by phone on 888-674-1558. Appointments may be made up to one calendar day before the day you want to test, subject to availability — so a Monday sitting can be booked on Sunday if a seat is open. The exam fee is paid at the time of reservation by credit card, debit card or voucher; the handbook is explicit that fees are not accepted at the test centre. Vouchers expire 12 months from issuance.
Create the account carefully. Your Pearson web account must be created with your legal name exactly as it appears on the government-issued ID you will bring. This is the single most common avoidable failure at check-in, and the fix takes two minutes at registration and is impossible on exam morning.
Eligibility windows. An exam registration carries an eligibility period, and if you do not test within it the registration expires and the fee goes with it. The handbook does not state the length of that window in the current revision, so treat the date shown in your confirmation as authoritative and book the sitting rather than sitting on the registration.
Changing or cancelling. To cancel or reschedule without penalty you must act at least 48 hours before the appointment; with proper notice you can transfer the fee to a new appointment or request a refund. Inside 48 hours the $37 is forfeit and a new booking means a new fee. Reexamination fees are non-refundable and non-transferable in every case.
Weather and holidays. New England makes this a real category. The handbook carries a weather delay and cancellation policy alongside Pearson's holiday schedule — if a storm is forecast, check the centre's status the night before rather than driving to find a locked door, and check the holiday calendar before booking near a public holiday.
On the day. Report at least 30 minutes early with one current, government-issued photo-and-signature ID. The Life & Health guide walks through check-in, security and the on-screen mechanics in detail.
What It Costs
The exam is $37. The three-year licence is $300 — and that is the number to plan on, not $225, because any licence carrying Property, Casualty or Personal Lines authority picks up the statutory $75 lead paint surcharge. About $337 all in on a first-attempt pass, plus NIPR's transaction fee.
The surcharge is charged once per licence term, not per line. So a producer holding Property, Casualty and Personal Lines pays the same $300 as one holding Property alone — which makes adding the Casualty line a $37 decision rather than a $112 one.
Nothing else is mandatory. No pre-licensing tuition, no fingerprint fee. If you go on to place non-admitted business, the surplus lines broker licence is a separate annual licence at $150.
Eligibility Requirements
You must be at least 18 years old and, for a resident license, maintain your residence or principal place of business in Massachusetts (M.G.L. c. 175 § 162L). There is no citizenship requirement and no education requirement beyond passing the exam.
Massachusetts does not fingerprint resident producer applicants. Your background is reviewed through the application's written disclosure questions instead — and that duty does not end at licensure: § 162V requires you to report any administrative action to the Division within 30 days of final disposition, and any criminal prosecution within 30 days of the initial pretrial hearing date, with copies of the underlying documents. Property producers should note the licence-fee consequence of the disclosure step as well: the $300 fee is set at the transaction, so add lines in one filing where you can.
Keeping Your License Active
Important CE details: Massachusetts runs a 36-month CE cycle. Your first renewal after original licensure requires 60 credits; every renewal after that requires 45. Either way, 3 hours must be Massachusetts-approved ethics — coded MAE in the CE system. Excess classroom hours carry forward, but only one cycle. Producers who sell NFIP flood coverage need an additional 3 hours of Massachusetts-approved flood CE (DOI Bulletin 2006-07).
Massachusetts runs a 36-month CE cycle keyed to your birth month: 60 credits before your first renewal, 45 for every renewal after, including 3 hours of Massachusetts-approved ethics (code MAE) each cycle. Excess classroom hours carry forward one cycle only.
Property producers carry one line-specific requirement. Selling flood coverage through the National Flood Insurance Program requires 3 hours of Massachusetts-approved flood CE under DOI Bulletin 2006-07 — a small requirement that is easy to forget until a renewal is blocked. Given that Massachusetts's dominant catastrophe exposure is coastal, most property producers here end up needing it.
The Property & Casualty guide covers the renewal mechanics in full — the 90-day early window, the CE-posting delay, and the 12-month reinstatement rule.
Quick Reference
Official Links
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