The Minnesota Casualty Producer License
Minnesota licenses producers by line of authority, and casualty is its own line. Minn. Stat. 60K.38, subd. 1 lists the major lines as life; accident and health or sickness; property; casualty; variable life and variable annuity products; and personal lines. Property and casualty are separate lines, not two halves of one licence, and PSI prints a separate paper for each alongside the combined one. Your regulator is the Minnesota Department of Commerce - Minnesota has no Department of Insurance. Insurance sits inside Commerce next to banking, securities and energy, and the Commissioner of Commerce is appointed by the Governor with the advice and consent of the Senate rather than elected.
The entry list is short and every item on it is a real gate. Be 18. Complete 20 hours of Commerce-approved casualty pre-licensing education - per line of authority, under Minn. Stat. 60K.36, subd. 4. Pass the Casualty Producer exam at 70%. Be fingerprinted. Apply and pay $50 for the line plus the technology surcharge, currently $10. Minnesota has not repealed its coursework requirement; the Commerce Department, the PSI bulletin and the statute all still carry it, and a repeal search across mn.gov and revisor.mn.gov turned up nothing.
The sequencing penalty is the harshest single rule on this page, and it is worth reading twice. Commerce states it flatly: "If you take the examination before you have successfully completed all applicable prelicense education requirements, you will forfeit your examination fees, your results will not count - even if you pass." There is no cure and no appeal described. A candidate who books early because a seat opened up, and finishes the coursework the following week, has spent $45 for nothing.
Fingerprinting is required of every producer applicant, and this guide owns that step - the bulletin's own words are that "ALL applicants for Producer and Adjuster licenses must provide a set of fingerprints." The part that catches people is not the requirement but the order: Minnesota takes the prints after the exam, electronically at the PSI test centre, because PSI is the vendor that captures them. The [fingerprinting section below](#fingerprinting) walks the whole sequence, both routes and both published costs.
What the casualty line actually asks you to know here is unusually concentrated. Twenty-five of your 75 scored items are Minnesota law, and the two statutes that dominate the Minnesota-specific casualty material are chapter 65B, the No-Fault Automobile Insurance Act running from 65B.41 to 65B.71, and chapter 176, workers' compensation. Minnesota is a no-fault auto state, which means the national auto outline you have been studying is wrong in Minnesota on the benefit structure, on how underinsured motorist coverage is computed, on whether a motorcycle is a motor vehicle at all, and on when a claimant may sue for pain and suffering. Those are the items in the [most-tested table below](#most-tested).
Casualty alone, or the combined paper? The exam fee is $45 either way, so the question is scope rather than money. The combined Property & Casualty paper carries 130 scored items in 3 hours and confers both lines - but it also means 40 hours of pre-licensing rather than 20, because the coursework requirement is per line of authority, and a second $50 line fee. If commercial liability, auto and workers' compensation are the whole of your book, the standalone casualty paper is 55 fewer scored items for the same fee. If you expect to write homeowners or commercial property, buy the combined paper once.
One Casualty Paper, One Combined Paper, and the 20-Item Core You Share With Every Other Line
Two bookable papers confer the Minnesota casualty line, and both cost $45.
Casualty Producer - the standalone paper. 85 items administered: 75 scored plus 10 pretest, in 2 hours. The content outline splits it as "Product Knowledge, Terms, and Concepts (50 scored plus 5 pretest questions)" and "State Laws, Rules, and Regulations (25 scored plus 5 pretest questions)."
Property & Casualty Producer - the combined paper. 145 items administered: 130 scored plus 15 pretest, in 3 hours, split 50 property, 50 casualty and 30 Minnesota. Different duration and a different outline PDF, so it is genuinely a different instrument rather than the same paper scored twice.
Minnesota assigns no series or code numbers to its exams. They are identified by name only, in both the bulletin's fee table and its time table - those tables carry columns for the exam name and the fee or the time, and nothing else. If a prep site sells you a "Minnesota Casualty exam code," it made the code up. Book by name at test-takers.psiexams.com/mnins or on (866) 395-1006.
The structure of your 25 Minnesota items is worth knowing before you allocate study time. Every Minnesota producer paper carries the same shared block - "Minnesota Laws, Rules, and Regulations Common to Life, Health, Property, and Casualty Insurance", 20 items - plus a short line-specific tail, which on this paper is 5 items "Pertinent to Casualty Insurance Only." Read that carefully rather than gratefully. The 20-item core is Minnesota law too; it is common to the lines, not general to the country. And the No-Fault Act is not confined to the five-item tail, because a Minnesota auto question is a no-fault question no matter which block it sits in.
The passing standard is 70%, and in Minnesota that is a raw percentage. The bulletin says "You will need 70% correct to pass the exam," and the absence of a scaled score here was checked rather than assumed: the words scaled and raw, and PSI's standard scaled-score disclaimer, appear nowhere in the bulletin's eleven pages. The Personal Lines outline corroborates it independently with a column headed "Minimum Passing Score - 70%." So unlike several scaled-score states, you can reason about your own performance directly - 53 of 75 scored items clears 70%.
Two documents disagree about how many items do not count, and both are PSI's. The bulletin describes "a small number (5 to 15) of 'experimental' questions" that "will not be scored" but "will count against examination time." The content outlines instead specify exactly 5 pretest per section - 10 on this paper, 15 on the combined one. Both statements can be true at once, since 10 and 15 sit inside the 5-to-15 envelope. Either way you cannot identify them on the day, so it changes your pacing and nothing else: budget the full 85 items across 2 hours, which is about 85 seconds an item.
Two clocks run on your money and they are easy to cross-wire. Your examination fee is forfeited "if you do not test within 1 year of the date your examination fee is received by PSI." Your passing score, once you have one, is valid for three years from the date of the examination. One year to use the fee; three years to use the pass. Neither is the other.
PSI also publishes Spanish content outlines alongside the English ones - the bulletin's table of contents lists both sections. The bulletin itself carries no item counts in either language, because its outline sections are link tables pointing at the per-exam PDFs.
The rest of the exam-day machinery lives in the other Minnesota guides, and this guide does not duplicate it: the nine Minnesota test centres and their street addresses are in the [Property guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-only/licensing-guide); remotely proctored delivery, which Minnesota does offer, is walked in the [Health guide](/insurance/minnesota/health-only/licensing-guide); score reporting, the diagnostic report and retake rules are in the [Personal Lines guide](/insurance/minnesota/personal-lines/licensing-guide); and check-in, ID and prohibited items are in the [Life & Health guide](/insurance/minnesota/life-and-health/licensing-guide).
Most Tested Topics on the Minnesota Casualty Exam
Minnesota's casualty items come out of two statutes above all others: chapter 65B, the No-Fault Automobile Insurance Act (65B.41 to 65B.71), and chapter 176, workers' compensation. Before the table, one definitional rule that decides items on its own. Under 65B.43, subd. 7, "loss" is a closed list - "economic detriment... consisting only of medical expense, income loss, replacement services loss" plus funeral and survivor's losses - so pain and suffering is definitionally outside PIP, not merely excluded by a policy term. And Minn. Stat. 65B.44, subd. 8 - a different section, not a neighbouring subdivision of the definition - puts physical damage to property, including motor vehicles and their contents, outside basic economic loss benefits entirely. A question that asks what PIP pays for a wrecked car is testing a definition, not a limit.
| Concept | What Minnesota does | Where it's written |
|---|---|---|
| PIP benefit split, No-Fault Act | $40,000 minimum per person, and it is two non-fungible $20,000 buckets, not one pot: "(1) $20,000 for medical expense loss" and "(2) a total of $20,000 for income loss, replacement services loss, funeral expense loss, survivor's economic loss, and survivor's replacement services loss." Unused medical does not migrate to the income side. Worked example: $32,000 of medical plus $6,000 of wage loss pays $26,000, not $38,000 - $20,000 of medical (capped) plus $6,000 of income loss, leaving $12,000 of medical uncompensated while $14,000 of the other bucket sits unused. | Minn. Stat. 65B.44, subd. 1(a)(1)-(2) |
| PIP weekly sublimits, income and replacement services | Income loss is 85% of lost gross income subject to a maximum of $500 per week. Replacement services loss is capped at $200 per week and excludes the date of injury and the following seven days. Both sit inside the shared $20,000 bucket, so the sublimit and the bucket both have to be cleared. | Minn. Stat. 65B.44, subds. 3(a) and 5 |
| Weekly maximums and partial weeks, PIP | The statute forecloses the obvious workaround in its own words: "The weekly maximums may not be prorated to arrive at a daily maximum, even if the injured person does not incur loss of income for a full week." A three-day loss does not become three-sevenths of $500. | Minn. Stat. 65B.44, subd. 3(d) |
| Death benefits inside PIP | Funeral and burial is reasonable expenses not in excess of $5,000. Survivors economic loss runs to a maximum of $500 per week and only "in the event of death occurring within one year of the date of the accident"; survivors replacement services loss is $200 per week. All of them share the same $20,000 non-medical bucket with income loss. | Minn. Stat. 65B.44, subds. 4, 6 and 7 |
| Tort threshold for noneconomic damages, auto | $4,000 as a formula, not a bill total. Add medical expense benefits paid or payable, plus the value of free medical care or ordinary and necessary nursing services performed by a relative or household member, plus the shortfall where the injured person was charged less than the state's average reasonable amount - then subtract benefits for diagnostic x-rays and for rehabilitative rather than remedial treatment or occupational retraining. The operator is "exceeds," so exactly $4,000 fails. Four alternative prongs open the door instead: death, permanent disfigurement, permanent injury, or disability for 60 days or more. | Minn. Stat. 65B.51, subd. 3(a)(1)-(4) and 3(b) |
| Compulsory coverage package, Minnesota private passenger auto | 30/60/10 residual liability, $40,000 PIP, 25/50 uninsured and 25/50 underinsured - and the last two are separate coverages with no rejection option: no plan of reparation security may be renewed, delivered, issued for delivery or executed in Minnesota for a vehicle registered or principally garaged here "unless separate uninsured and underinsured motorist coverages are provided therein" (subd. 3a(1)), and every such owner "shall maintain uninsured and underinsured motorist coverages as provided in this subdivision" (subd. 3a(2)). No reparation obligor need write UM or UIM limits above the policy's bodily injury liability limit. | Minn. Stat. 65B.49, subds. 3(1) and 3a(1), (3); 65B.44, subd. 1(a) |
| Underinsured motorist measure of recovery | Minnesota measures UIM as a difference of DAMAGES, not a difference of limits: the maximum liability is the damages sustained but not recovered from the at-fault vehicle's insurance, capped by the UIM limits. Separately, nothing is recoverable under UM or UIM for basic economic loss benefits paid or payable, so PIP cannot be collected twice. | Minn. Stat. 65B.49, subds. 4a and 3a(4) |
| Motorcycle status under the No-Fault Act | A motorcycle is not a "motor vehicle" - the definition reaches "every vehicle, other than a motorcycle or other vehicle with fewer than four wheels." So a motorcycle carries liability coverage only, with a mandatory application notice saying so, and an insured occupying a motorcycle they own gets no UM or UIM. But the word comes back: subds. 16 and 17 each add "or motorcycle" into the uninsured and underinsured definitions, so a motorcycle can still be the uninsured vehicle that hits you. "All registered vehicles need PIP" is false here. | Minn. Stat. 65B.43, subds. 2, 16 and 17; 65B.48, subd. 5; 65B.49, subd. 3a(8) |
| PIP priority of applicable coverages | Person-first is the general rule - the security under which the injured person is an insured. It flips to vehicle-first in three named situations: a vehicle used in the business of transporting persons or property, an employer-furnished vehicle, and a bystander struck by one of those two who is not occupying another involved motor vehicle. Where several obligors are on the hook, benefits are payable only once; the one billed pays "as if wholly responsible" and then takes pro rata contribution. | Minn. Stat. 65B.47, subds. 1, 2, 3, 4(a) and 5 |
| Anti-stacking, PIP versus UM/UIM | Two rules, one section apart, of deliberately different strength. PIP limits for two or more vehicles may not be added together "unless a policyholder makes a specific election" - so PIP stacking is opt-out-able. UM and UIM stacking is barred absolutely: "in no event" shall the limits for two or more motor vehicles be added together, "regardless of the number of policies involved, vehicles involved, persons covered, claims made... or premiums paid." | Minn. Stat. 65B.47, subd. 7; 65B.49, subd. 3a(6) |
| Overdue no-fault benefits, interest | Basic economic loss benefits are payable monthly as loss accrues, and loss accrues "not when injury occurs" but as each head of loss is incurred. Benefits are overdue if not paid within 30 days after the obligor receives reasonable proof of the fact and amount of loss - and overdue payments "bear simple interest at the rate of 15 percent per annum." | Minn. Stat. 65B.54, subds. 1 and 2 |
| Temporary total disability rate, workers' compensation | "66-2/3 percent of the weekly wage at the time of injury." That is the rate and only the rate; the cap and the floor live in different paragraphs of the same subdivision. | Minn. Stat. 176.101, subd. 1(a) |
| Maximum weekly compensation, workers' compensation | 108% of the statewide average weekly wage, from October 1, 2024 and each October 1 after, measured on the period ending December 31 of the preceding year. The wage it operates on is itself defined elsewhere: the commissioner determines it on or before July 1, dividing the average annual wage by 52 and rounding to the next highest dollar. Older material quoting 102% is describing a superseded version. | Minn. Stat. 176.101, subd. 1(b)(1); the wage at 176.011, subd. 1b |
| Minimum weekly compensation, workers' compensation | A live-looking trap inside one paragraph. It reads "$130 per week or the injured employee's actual weekly wage, whichever is less" - and the very next sentence, scoped "Beginning on October 1, 2021," replaces it with 20% of the maximum weekly compensation, or the actual weekly wage, whichever is less. The $130 is unrepealed and inoperative at once. | Minn. Stat. 176.101, subd. 1(c) |
| Waiting period, workers' compensation wage loss | Three CALENDAR days - "no compensation is allowed for the three calendar days after the disability commenced" - and it becomes retroactive to day one if the disability "continues for ten calendar days or longer," when compensation is "computed from the commencement of the disability." The statute states its own unit, so this is not a business-day rule. | Minn. Stat. 176.121 |
Four of these decide more points than the rest, and all four are places where the Minnesota answer is not the national one.
The first is the PIP split, because a national course teaches PIP as a single limit and Minnesota's is two limits that cannot see each other. Work the statute's own arithmetic until it is automatic: $32,000 of medical and $6,000 of wage loss pays $26,000, because the medical bucket caps at $20,000 and the $6,000 of income loss comes out of the other $20,000. The intuitive answer - $38,000, or the whole $40,000 - is the wrong one, and it is wrong in the direction the exam will offer you. The same instinct fails on the sublimits: an insured earning $1,200 a week does not collect $1,020 (85% of gross), because $500 is the weekly ceiling; a claimant whose spouse hired help for four days in the week of the crash collects nothing for replacement services, because the date of injury and the following seven days are excluded; and a partial week does not become a fraction of $500, because the statute provides that "the weekly maximums may not be prorated to arrive at a daily maximum, even if the injured person does not incur loss of income for a full week".
The second is the $4,000 tort threshold, which is a formula rather than a bill total, and the formula runs in the opposite direction from where a fact pattern points you. Diagnostic x-rays and non-remedial rehabilitative treatment are subtracted; unbilled nursing care performed by a relative or household member is added. So a claimant with $4,500 of medical bills of which $900 is diagnostic imaging computes $3,600 and does not clear the threshold, while a claimant with $3,800 of bills plus $500 of family nursing care computes $4,300 and does. Then read the operator: the sum must exceed $4,000, so exactly $4,000 fails. And remember the threshold has four alternative prongs - death, permanent disfigurement, permanent injury, or 60 days' disability - each of which opens noneconomic damages regardless of the arithmetic, with "disability" defined narrowly as the inability to engage in "substantially all" of the person's usual and customary daily activities rather than inability to work.
The third is UIM, on two counts. It is compulsory in Minnesota as a separate coverage with no rejection option, which reverses the national teaching that UIM is optional or rejectable; and it is measured as a difference of damages rather than a difference of limits, which changes every UIM computation you have practised. A claimant with $80,000 of damages who recovered $30,000 from a tortfeasor's liability policy is looking at the $50,000 shortfall against their UIM limits - not at the arithmetic gap between two policy limits. Alongside it sits the motorcycle trap, which is a definition rather than an exclusion: 65B.43, subd. 2 writes motorcycles out of "motor vehicle," so no compulsory PIP and liability coverage only, and 65B.49, subd. 3a(8) denies UM and UIM to someone occupying a motorcycle they own - yet subds. 16 and 17 put "or motorcycle" back into the uninsured and underinsured definitions, so a motorcycle can still be the uninsured vehicle on the other side of the collision. Both halves are testable, and a candidate who has learned only "motorcycles are excluded" will get one of them wrong.
The fourth is on the comp side and it is a version-in-force problem rather than a concept problem. Chapter 176 scatters its numbers across three sections on purpose, and each carries its own effective date. The rate - 66-2/3% - is 176.101, subd. 1(a). The cap - 108% of the statewide average weekly wage, from October 1, 2024 - is subd. 1(b)(1), and the wage it multiplies is defined at 176.011, subd. 1b. The minimum is subd. 1(c), where $130 sits unrepealed but superseded by the next sentence in the same paragraph, which since October 1, 2021 has substituted 20% of the maximum. And the waiting period is not in 176.101 at all - it is 176.121, three calendar days, going retroactive to day one at ten calendar days. That last rule is a cliff and not a taper: disabled eight days and you are paid for days four through eight; disabled ten days and you are paid for all ten. Any answer that cites one section for several of these numbers is citing the wrong section for most of them.
Fingerprints: At the Test Centre, After You Pass, and Before Commerce Will Take Your Application
Every producer applicant in Minnesota is fingerprinted. The PSI bulletin puts it in capitals and without carve-outs: "ALL applicants for Producer and Adjuster licenses must provide a set of fingerprints." There is no line-of-authority exemption, no designation that buys you out of it, and no adjuster exemption - adjusters escape the 20 hours of pre-licensing education, but they do not escape this. The checks behind it are run by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension at state level and the FBI at national level.
The part that catches people is not the requirement, it is the order. Commerce publishes the sequence as education, then exam, then fingerprints, then application, and the reason is mechanical rather than bureaucratic: PSI captures the prints, at the same test centre where you sat the paper. In Commerce's own words: "If you take your license examination at a PSI test center in Minnesota, your fingerprints will be taken electronically at the test center after you sit for and pass the exam and sign a background check consent form." And on the far end: "You can submit your application as soon as you have passed the examination and submitted your fingerprints." So the prints are not a prerequisite to testing and they are not something you chase down weeks later - on the ordinary path they happen in the same visit, minutes after your result appears on screen.
Step 1 - finish the 20 hours before you book, not before you sit. Casualty pre-licensing is 20 hours per line of authority under Minn. Stat. 60K.36, subd. 4, and the provider must send electronic certification to the state; approved providers are listed through Sircon at www.sircon.com/minnesota. Bring valid paper course-completion certificates that match your photo ID and your registration name - the bulletin is specific about the match. Test before the coursework is complete and Commerce forfeits your fee and voids the result even if you pass, which also means you will not be printed that day, because there is nothing to print you for.
Step 2 - sit the Casualty Producer paper. Your score appears on screen at the end of the session and a score report is emailed to you; a failing report carries a diagnostic breakdown by examination type. The fingerprint step is gated on passing - Commerce's sentence says "after you sit for and pass the exam" - so a failed attempt sends you back to rebooking rather than to the fingerprint station.
Step 3 - sign the background check authorization form, and note what its clock actually covers. Commerce: "Before your fingerprints are taken, you will need to sign a background check authorization form that expires one year after it is signed." That one year belongs to the form. It is the life of your authorization, not a shelf life for the completed check. How long a completed BCA and FBI result stays valid is not stated by any Minnesota source - not the bulletin, not the Commerce licensing pages. Do not repeat the widespread shorthand that "Minnesota fingerprints are good for a year"; that sentence attaches the form's expiry to the results, and no source supports it.
Step 4 - pay $63.75 by major credit card. Commerce itemises what you are buying: "This includes charges for background checks conducted by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the FBI as well as PSI vendor processing fees." It is a separate transaction from the $45 exam fee, and it is not part of the $50 licence fee you will pay later - three payments, two payees, on the ordinary path.
Step 5 - if you did not get printed on exam day, PSI runs walk-in fingerprinting. Commerce links the schedule under the title "PSI Test Center Locations and Walk-in Fingerprinting Hours" - the same nine Minnesota sites that host the exams, whose street addresses are listed in the [Property guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-only/licensing-guide). Walk-in hours are a subset of centre hours, so check them rather than assuming any open centre will print you.
Step 6 - the manual alternative, which is cheaper on its face and slower in practice. Take a manual fingerprint card at any local police station that offers manual fingerprinting, then mail the card and the signed consent form with a check for $32.00 payable to "Minnesota Department of Commerce" to: Minnesota Department of Commerce, 85 7th Place East, Suite 280, St. Paul, MN 55101. Note who is paid on each route - PSI on the electronic route, the Department of Commerce on the manual one - because the payee is the thing people get wrong when they write the check. Budget for whatever the police station charges for the card itself, and for postal transit in both directions.
Step 7 - apply. Once the exam is passed and the prints are submitted, file through Sircon, which is the Commerce Department's named front door for resident producer applications and the portal the bulletin itself points candidates at, or through NIPR, which also accepts Minnesota resident applications. The step-by-step application walkthrough is in the [Life guide](/insurance/minnesota/life-only/licensing-guide). One documented conflict to know about: NIPR states that an applicant is "not required to pass the exam prior to submitting the license application," though "an exam is required prior to the state's approval of the request," while Commerce publishes the exam-first sequence. Both are official and they are reconcilable - NIPR is describing what its transaction system will accept, Commerce is describing the workflow it runs - but treat Commerce's ordering as the operative guidance, because on the PSI route your prints cannot precede your pass in any event.
What Minnesota does not publish, stated as an absence rather than a rule. There is no service code. Minnesota routes fingerprinting through PSI test centres directly rather than through a code-issuing vendor of the IdentoGO kind, and neither a universal service code nor a per-applicant code appears anywhere in the bulletin or on the Commerce licensing pages. That is a reading of those documents, not a statement by either of them - no Minnesota source affirmatively says a service code is not required. The practical consequence is the same in both directions: if you arrive at a PSI centre expecting to hand over a code, you have imported a step from another state's process, and if a prep site gives you one, ask it where the code came from.
The remote-proctoring gap, which is real and is not resolved by any source read for this guide. Minnesota offers remotely proctored delivery - candidates "Select your test format: (Test Center) or (Remote Proctored)" - but Commerce's fingerprint sentence is conditioned on the other choice: "If you take your license examination at a PSI test center in Minnesota..." No source states how a remotely proctored Minnesota candidate is fingerprinted. The two published routes that do not depend on having sat at a centre are the walk-in hours and the manual card by mail, so a remote candidate should plan on one of those and confirm with Commerce before assuming otherwise. Remote proctoring itself is covered in the [Health guide](/insurance/minnesota/health-only/licensing-guide).
Non-residents: a genuine ambiguity worth one phone call. The bulletin's rule reaches "ALL applicants for Producer and Adjuster licenses" and does not distinguish residency, which cuts toward non-residents being printed. But the Commerce non-resident producer page never mentions fingerprinting, and its reciprocity test is stated entirely in NAIC Producer Database terms: the applicant must appear there with an active resident licence in good standing in another state for each line of authority applied for. Neither source resolves the other. If you are applying into Minnesota from another state's casualty licence, ask before you assume.
When you get printed a second time. A lapsed licence is reinstatable within 12 months of the renewal fee due date without retesting, on payment of a penalty equal to twice the unpaid renewal fee. Past that window the path changes character: Commerce states that a licence expired more than one year requires reapplication "with potential retesting and fingerprinting." Read "potential" as written - it is discretion, not a guarantee either way - but budget the $63.75 and the 20 hours as live possibilities before you let a casualty licence sit lapsed past its first year. Business entities cannot reinstate at all and must reapply regardless of the window. The renewal mechanics, the 90-day early window and the late tiers are in the [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide).
What It Costs
Three payments and two payees on the ordinary path, plus tuition you buy on the open market. $45 to PSI for the exam, $63.75 to PSI for electronic fingerprinting after you pass, and $50 plus the $10 technology surcharge to Minnesota with the application. Minnesota prices its exams flat rather than by length, so the 85-item casualty paper and the 145-item combined paper both cost $45 - which is why the choice between them is about scope and coursework hours, not about the exam fee.
Two of the four lines in this table carry a caveat, and both are disclosed rather than smoothed over. The licence fee is counted two different ways by two official sources: Minn. Stat. 60K.55 reads as $50 per line, while NIPR describes $50 per application with an additional $50 charged per line of authority. On a single casualty line that difference may be a second $50 at checkout. The likeliest reconciliation is a counting convention in which NIPR's "application" fee simply is the first line's $50, but no source says so, so treat the extra $50 as possible rather than settled. The technology surcharge has a statutory ceiling and an administered amount that are not the same number: 60K.55 authorises up to $40, and Sircon states that "Effective May 1, 2023, the technology surcharge will be $10." The $10 is what is charged today; the $40 is what the legislature permits.
Pre-licensing is a real cost that is not a state fee. Minnesota requires 20 hours per line of authority and does not price it - you buy the course from a Commerce-approved provider listed through Sircon, at whatever that provider charges. Nothing in this table covers it, and nothing in the $168.75 total does either.
Two smaller costs sit outside the table. Sircon or NIPR takes its own transaction fee at checkout, and an insurer appointment carries a fee of its own - $30 is the figure quoted in Commerce's 2020 temporary-licensing guidance, a document whose other numbers are demonstrably stale, so treat the $30 as unverified. You can hold a producer licence before any insurer appoints you, but an appointment is required in order to transact business in Minnesota, and the insurer pays that one.
Eligibility Requirements
Be 18, complete 20 hours of Commerce-approved casualty pre-licensing education, pass the Casualty Producer exam at 70%, be fingerprinted, and file through Sircon or NIPR with $50 for the line plus the $10 technology surcharge. There is no sponsoring-insurer requirement to sit the exam and no minimum-experience prerequisite.
The coursework has exemptions, and they exempt you from the coursework only. The bulletin introduces the list verbatim - "The following will be exempt from the insurance producer prelicense education requirement" - and for this line it names: someone with a two-year Minnesota vocational school degree in insurance; someone with a four-year college degree in business with an insurance emphasis; and Property, Casualty, or Personal Lines P&C applicants holding AAI, ARM, CIC or CPCU. Minn. Stat. 60K.36, subd. 4 separately waives prelicensing for someone previously licensed in Minnesota for that line. No designation waives the Minnesota examination. A CPCU still sits the 75-item casualty paper; what the letters buy is the 20 hours, not the exam.
Where that list lives is itself worth knowing. The designation roster appears in the PSI handbook and nowhere else that a candidate can reach. The Commerce resident-producer page gestures at the subject - it promises "A list of exemptions to the prelicensing education and corresponding documentation the applicant must present to the exam center" - without naming a single designation and without a working link to one. If you are claiming an exemption, print the handbook page and bring the documentation to the test centre, because the exam-centre staff are the ones who check it.
Moving in from another state's casualty licence? Do not start here. A relocation waiver takes both the education and the examination out of the sequence. The handbook: "An applicant for licensing in this state who was previously licensed for the same lines of authority in another state need not complete any education or examination if the application is received within ninety (90) days after the cancellation of his license." Commerce describes the same waiver in its own words - applicants "are exempt from taking MN pre-licensing or passing the MN exam if application for the MN resident license is made within 90 days of the resident license going inactive." Same 90 days, marginally different trigger language: the handbook measures from cancellation, Commerce from the licence going inactive. Both phrasings are official and neither has been harmonised, so if your dates are close to the edge, work from the more conservative of the two. Nonresident licensing and the full reciprocity picture are in the [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide).
Your pass has a three-year life. "Examination results are valid for three years from the date of the examination," which is in practice the deadline for filing the application - no shorter one is published. Keep it distinct from the one-year clock on an unused exam fee, which PSI forfeits if you have not tested within a year of receiving your money.
No attempt cap is stated. The bulletin carries no limit on retakes anywhere in its eleven pages - but note that this is an absence rather than a permission, since no source affirmatively says attempts are unlimited. What is stated is the timing: you cannot rebook on the same day "due to processing and reporting results," and the bulletin's own worked example is that a candidate who fails on a Wednesday "can call the next day, Thursday, and retest as soon as Friday, depending upon space availability." Expect to pay a new $45.
Three things about the licence itself that a casualty producer should know before the first placement. The licence is authority to act, not authority to bind: 60K.32 says in terms that "the license itself does not create any authority, actual, apparent, or inherent, in the holder to represent or commit an insurance carrier." Acting as a producer without a licence is a gross misdemeanor under 60K.33. And 60K.47 is the one that bites hardest on a casualty book - a producer who places business with an unauthorized insurer is personally liable for all premiums, earned or unearned, and for any loss the insured sustained, and it applies "whether or not licensed," with surplus lines placements under 60A.195 to 60A.209 carved out. That is civil liability to your own client, not a regulatory penalty.
Keep the file current. A name or address change must reach the commissioner within ten days (60K.38, subd. 6). Separate reporting duties attach to administrative actions and criminal matters, and Minnesota runs more clocks there than the NAIC model does - those are covered in the [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide) rather than duplicated here.
Keeping the License
Important CE details: 24 credit hours each licensing period including 3 hours of ethics, plus a Minnesota split on top of that: at least 12 of the 24 must not be sponsored by, offered by, or affiliated with an insurance company or its agents. No more than 8 hours may be credited in a single day, and you may not repeat a course for credit inside the same licensing period. The period is the licence term itself - at least 12 and no more than 24 months, ending on the last day of your birth month under Minn. Stat. 60K.55, subd. 2 - so the steady state is biennial rather than a fixed calendar cycle. Courses and providers must be approved by the Commissioner of Commerce, and the licensee is told to verify that the provider is active and in good standing and that the course is approved. Transcripts and the approved-course lookup run through Sircon, and your transcript must read compliant on or before the expiration date before a renewal is approved. Falling short is not a fine: under Minn. Stat. 60K.56 no licence may be renewed or continued in force beginning the day after the renewal was due, and that person may not act as an insurance producer until compliance is demonstrated or a waiver or extension is obtained. The commissioner may allow up to 90 days for good cause. Producers soliciting or selling solely on behalf of chapter 67A township mutual companies are exempt from the section entirely. A casualty producer who sells flood insurance through the NFIP faces a separate gate at Minn. Stat. 60K.366 - Minnesota states no hour count for it and defers to the FEMA standard at 70 Federal Register 52,117 - and no source states whether that training counts toward the 24 hours.
24 credit hours each licensing period, 3 of them ethics - and Minnesota adds a split that most states do not: at least 12 of the 24 must not be sponsored by, offered by, or affiliated with an insurance company or its agents. Note the direction that rule runs. It is not phrased as a cap on carrier courses so much as a floor on independent ones, and it is the half of your transcript a carrier-heavy CE diet will fail on. A maximum of 8 hours may be credited in a single day, and you may not repeat a course for credit during the same licensing period.
The requirement is per person, not per line. A producer holding casualty alone and a producer holding casualty, property and life owe the same 24 hours. Adding lines multiplies your licence fees, not your CE.
"Licensing period" is doing quiet work in that sentence. Neither Minn. Stat. 60K.56 nor the Commerce CE page states the period as a number of months; both say only "each licensing period." You have to join it to 60K.55, subd. 2, which sets the licence term: individual licences issued or renewed on or after August 1, 2010 expire on the last day of the birth month of the producer, on a term of at least 12 and no more than 24 months, and biennially on that day thereafter. So the steady state is two years anchored to your birth month, and your first term is stretched or trimmed to land there. Do not use the old October 31 rule. It survives in the statute only as a legacy clause for licences issued before August 1, 2010, and the even/odd birth-year mechanism that circulates with it does not appear in 60K.55 or 60K.38 at all.
Missing the hours is not a fine - it is a bar on practising. Minn. Stat. 60K.56: "no license may be renewed or continued in force for that person for any class of insurance beginning the day after the renewal was due," and that person "may not act as an insurance producer until the person has demonstrated to the satisfaction of the commissioner that all requirements of this section have been complied with or that a waiver or extension has been obtained." The commissioner may allow up to 90 days for good cause. Your Sircon transcript must read compliant on or before the expiration date before Commerce will approve a renewal, and providers upload completions to Sircon, so leave room for their reporting rather than finishing on the last night.
Fees and the lapse ladder. Renewal is $50 per line of authority plus the current technology surcharge, filed through Sircon, and you may renew no more than 90 days before expiration. Miss it and a penalty in the amount of twice the unpaid renewal fee must be paid - a multiple of the fee rather than a flat figure, which both the Commerce renewal page and Minn. Stat. 60K.38 state in identical words. Within 12 months of the due date you can reinstate without retesting; beyond 12 months you reapply, and Commerce warns that reapplication comes "with potential retesting and fingerprinting" - which puts the $63.75 and another 20 hours of casualty coursework back on the table, as the [fingerprinting section above](#fingerprinting) explains. Business entities cannot reinstate at any point and must reapply regardless of the window.
One exemption and one product gate that matter on this line. Producers soliciting or selling solely on behalf of chapter 67A township mutual fire companies are exempt from the CE section entirely (60K.56, subd. 3) - a genuinely Minnesota provision, and a live one in rural property and casualty practice. On the other side, a casualty producer who wants to sell flood insurance through the NFIP faces Minn. Stat. 60K.366, which gates the sale on being "licensed as an insurance producer for property, casualty, or personal lines" and meeting the federal training standard at 70 Federal Register 52,117. Minnesota states no hour count of its own for that training and no source says whether it counts toward the 24 hours - so do not accept a specific figure for it from a prep site.
The full renewal walkthrough, including the early window and the late tiers, is in the [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide).
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