The Mississippi Personal Lines Producer License
Personal Lines is line (f) at Miss. Code Ann. §83-17-63(1) and is a genuine subset authority: it reaches personal property and casualty risks - homeowners, dwelling fire, personal auto, personal umbrella, personal inland marine - and stops short of commercial. A full Property and Casualty authority already includes everything Personal Lines does, so nobody holds both, and the practical question for a new producer is which of the two to take.
The exam is 75 scored questions in 120 minutes at 70%, and it has one oddity worth knowing before you study. Content outline #122501 publishes "(75 scored questions)" for Personal Lines and, alone among Mississippi's producer outlines, states no pretest count. Every other producer outline carries a "plus 10 pretest questions" clause. We do not infer ten here, and neither should you: the honest statement is that Pearson VUE does not publish a pretest count for this exam, so plan for 75 questions and be unsurprised if the screen shows more.
Pre-licensing is 20 hours for the personal lines line of authority under §83-17-251(2). The House Bill 819 exemption enacted in 2024 reaches an applicant seeking the life line "only" and does not touch this line.
Substantively, Personal Lines is the Mississippi licence where cancellation and nonrenewal law matters most, and Mississippi's rules changed materially with House Bill 1611 of 2025. The act itself took effect 1 July 2025, but the operative change - thirty days of notice becoming forty-five - applies to coverage "issued or renewed on or after July 1, 2026." That date has now passed, so the forty-five-day rule is live for anything written or renewed since. Any study material, and any older edition of this guide, that presents the change as forthcoming is describing a world that ended in July.
Personal Lines or the Full Property and Casualty Authority
The Personal Lines Producer exam is 75 scored questions in 120 minutes, passing at 70% - fifty-three correct of the seventy-five scored items. It is the largest single-line producer exam Mississippi gives: Life, Accident & Health, Property and Casualty are each sixty scored questions. It is also given the same two hours as those sixty-question exams, so the pace is tighter here than anywhere else in the single-line set - about 96 seconds a question against roughly 103 seconds on a 70-item single-line exam. And because Pearson VUE publishes no pretest count for Personal Lines, the real figure may be tighter still.
The Property and Casualty Producer exam is 90 scored plus 10 pretest in 150 minutes, also at 70%. Fifteen more scored questions than Personal Lines for thirty more minutes, and it carries a far broader authority.
Both exams are available through OnVUE. Mississippi's remote-testing suspension reaches only the three life and health exams; Property, Casualty, combined Property and Casualty and Personal Lines are unaffected. The Casualty guide covers remote testing, its two-attempt cap and its fourteen-day retake wait in full - read it before choosing a channel, because the retake rules differ sharply and the difference is the main thing worth weighing.
The fee is $50 per attempt in either channel, and the 48-hour cancellation rule applies to both: call Pearson VUE on (888) 293-4222 at least forty-eight hours ahead to transfer the fee or request a refund; inside that window the whole $50 is gone.
Most Tested Topics on the Mississippi Personal Lines Exam
Cancellation and nonrenewal is the heart of Mississippi's personal lines law, and it is genuinely intricate here: four statutes changed together in 2025, they govern four different things, and the change did not touch nonpayment. The table below sets out the state of the law as it now stands for coverage issued or renewed on or after 1 July 2026.
| Concept | Mississippi rule | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Personal auto cancellation, notice | 45 days' notice, mailed or delivered to the named insured and any named creditor loss payee, for coverage issued or renewed on or after 1 July 2026 - formerly 30 | §83-11-5, as amended by House Bill 1611 (2025) |
| Personal auto cancellation for nonpayment | 10 days, accompanied by the reason - UNCHANGED by House Bill 1611 | §83-11-5 |
| Personal auto nonrenewal, notice | 45 days' advance notice of intention not to renew, to the named insured and the named creditor loss payee | §83-11-7 |
| Renewal on less favourable terms | 45 days' advance notice where the insurer renews on a replacement policy form with terms less favourable, whether by the same insurer or an affiliate | §83-11-7 |
| Property cancellation, reduction and nonrenewal | 45 days' notice for renewal, cancellation, reduction in coverage or nonrenewal of liability, fire, or single premium multiperil coverage | §83-5-28, as amended by House Bill 1611 (2025) |
| Property nonpayment carve-out | §83-5-28 "shall not apply to nonpayment of premium unless there is a named creditor loss payee, in which case at least ten (10) days' notice is required" | §83-5-28 |
| Remedy for a short notice | The named insured may continue the policy for the remainder of the notice period PLUS an additional 45 days at the existing premium rate - a remedy House Bill 1611 added to all four sections | House Bill 1611 (2025) |
| Auto new-business window | §83-11-3's restrictions do not apply to a policy or coverage in effect less than 60 days at the time notice is mailed, unless it is a renewal policy | §83-11-3 |
| Grounds to cancel an auto policy after 60 days | Three: nonpayment of premium; suspension or revocation of the driver's licence or registration of the named insured or a household or customary operator during the policy period or the 180 days before a renewal, subject to a 7-day written-notice driver-exclusion cure; and failure to pay dues to or maintain membership in a designated association where issuance depended on it | §83-11-3(1)(a), (b), (c) |
| Proof of notice | "Proof of mailing of notice of cancellation, or of intention not to renew, or of reasons for cancellation to the named insured by a certificate of mailing, at the address shown in the policy, shall be sufficient proof of notice" - but this is an AUTO provision; §83-5-28 has no equivalent for property | §83-11-9 |
| Workers' compensation notice, for completeness | Also moved 30 to 45 days by the same act, but the section sits in Title 71 (Labor), not Title 83 | §71-3-77 |
| Policyholder Bill of Rights, scope | Applies to homeowners personal lines residential property policies only - including surplus lines insurers, MWUA and MRPIUA - imposes NO acknowledgment, investigation or payment deadline on the insurer, and creates no private civil cause of action | 19 Miss. Admin. Code Pt. 1, R. 34.03, 34.07 |
| Unfair claims settlement practices | Mississippi has adopted NONE - §83-5-35 is the frozen 1956 model with nine acts (a) to (i) and no claims list, and the NAIC's model-adoption chart records "no current activity" for Model 900 | §83-5-35; NAIC Model 900 chart |
The most-missed item here is not any single day count but the shape of the two nonpayment rules, which are not parallel. On auto, §83-11-5 shortens the notice: cancellation for nonpayment requires "at least ten (10) days' notice of cancellation accompanied by the reason therefor." On property, §83-5-28 does not shorten the notice - it switches the whole section off. The statute reads that it "shall not apply to nonpayment of premium unless there is a named creditor loss payee, in which case at least ten (10) days' notice is required." So a homeowners policy cancelled for nonpayment with no mortgagee on it falls outside §83-5-28 entirely; add a mortgagee and ten days appears. Ten days shows up in both statutes and gets there by two different routes.
The second most-missed item is the proof-of-mailing presumption, because candidates generalise it. §83-11-9 provides that a certificate of mailing "shall be sufficient proof of notice," and it is a clean, quotable rule. It sits in Title 83, Chapter 11, Article 1, whose applicability is set by §83-11-3 - the automobile article. §83-5-28, which governs fire, liability and multiperil, contains no proof-of-mailing provision at all. There is no equivalent certificate-of-mailing presumption for property insurance in Mississippi.
The third is the new remedy, which is easy to overlook because it is not a day count. House Bill 1611 added to all four amended sections a consequence for getting the notice wrong: "[i]f the insurer fails to meet the notice requirement of this section, the named insured has the option of continuing the policy or contract for the remainder of the notice period plus an additional forty-five (45) days at the premium rate of the existing policy or contract." Before 2025 a short notice was simply ineffective; now the insured has an affirmative election, at the old rate, and it can run substantially past the intended cancellation date.
Mississippi Exam Results, Retakes and What Happens Next
Mississippi's results regime has one feature that makes it easier than most - a raw percentage rather than a scaled score - and one that makes it more complicated than most: the retake rules depend on how you sat the exam.
Your score is a percentage, and it means what it says. The candidate handbook's entire passing-score statement is two sentences: "The passing score required on the Life only, Accident & Health or Sickness only, and the Life, Accident & Health or Sickness (combined) Producer examination is 65%. The passing score required on all other examinations is 70%." For Personal Lines that is 70% of 75 scored questions - fifty-three correct. Crucially, the scaled-score boilerplate that most state handbooks carry - the sentence warning that the reported number is "neither the number nor the percentage of questions answered correctly" - appears nowhere in the Mississippi handbook. Mississippi is a true raw-percentage state. If a course tells you your Mississippi result will be a converted scaled score, it is describing a different state.
Pretest questions do not count, and on this exam you do not know how many there are. Every other Mississippi producer content outline states a pretest count - ten, in each case. Outline #122501's Personal Lines header reads simply "(75 scored questions)" with no pretest clause. Whatever unscored items appear are embedded and unmarked, and there is no way to identify them and no benefit in trying.
Retakes: the asymmetry is the thing to plan around. At a test centre, the handbook says a candidate "must wait one (1) day before scheduling a reexamination," and it states plainly that "Testing at a test center is unlimited." Through OnVUE, "Candidates are limited to 2 attempts per exam via OnVue," and those who do not pass the first online attempt "are required to wait 14 days before retesting." All three sentences sit in the same passage, and the contrast is the whole point: one channel is rationed and the other is not.
Reservations for a retake are never made at the centre. The handbook is explicit: "Reservations for reexamination are not made at the test center." Whichever way you tested, rebooking happens online at pearsonvue.com/us/en/ms/insurance.html or by telephone on (888) 293-4222, and each attempt is another $50.
How long a pass is good for. Mississippi does not publish a score-expiry rule, and it is worth being precise about what it does publish, because the two are easy to confuse. The handbook's licensing prerequisite reads: "Pass the required examination(s) within two years of license application for the type of license you are seeking." Read literally, that is a requirement on the application - the exam must have been passed within the two years preceding it - rather than a statement that a score expires. Functionally it produces a two-year window between passing and filing. Quote it rather than paraphrasing it as "scores are valid for two years," and in practice do not let the gap approach two years at all.
What the score report actually is. The handbook's Quick Reference says each candidate "will leave the test center with an official score report in hand," and that all candidates, whether testing at a centre or online, "will have access to their score report online within their own account page" on the Pearson VUE Mississippi site; a duplicate is retrieved by logging in and clicking score reports. What the handbook does not describe is any diagnostic or content-area breakdown on a failing report - the words diagnostic, content area, raw score and scaled score appear nowhere in publication #122500. Some Pearson VUE programmes furnish a section breakdown and some do not; Mississippi's handbook does not promise one, so do not plan a retake strategy around receiving it.
Plan the retake against the outline instead. Content outline #122501 is the actual blueprint for this exam - it is the document that fixes the 75 scored questions and their sections - and it is public. Working back through it section by section is a better use of a retake interval than restarting a general course, whether or not your score report tells you where you fell short.
Where to spend a retake. On the Mississippi Laws portion, almost always. The general personal-lines material is national and your course will have covered it competently. The Mississippi-specific content - the forty-five-day notice regime, the two different nonpayment structures, the auto-only proof-of-mailing presumption, the absence of any unfair claims settlement practices act - is where a nationally-trained candidate loses points, and it is a small enough body of material to master properly in the fourteen days an OnVUE retake makes you wait anyway.
After you pass. File the uniform application through NIPR or Sircon; the Life guide walks that process step by step. MID's own material says an online application is transmitted to the Department within twenty-four hours, that requests "can be handled in up to 5 business days," and that paper applications take up to ten business days. Licences are emailed on approval and mailed the following business day.
Mississippi Personal Lines License Fees
| Item | Amount | Paid to | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-licensing course, Personal Lines | 20 hours, provider-priced | Approved education provider | §83-17-251(2) |
| Personal Lines Producer examination | $50 per attempt | Pearson VUE | Handbook #122500 fee table |
| Resident producer licence | $100 per licence, not per line | Mississippi Insurance Department | §27-15-87(1) |
| Upgrading to full Property & Casualty later | A second $50 exam plus $25 to amend, plus the additional coursework | Pearson VUE; Mississippi Insurance Department | §27-15-87(2) |
| Portal transaction fee | About $1 | NIPR or Sircon | NIPR and Sircon fee schedules |
| Fingerprinting | Not required for producers | - | no producer authority in Title 83 |
| Appointment, paid by the insurer | $50 since 1 July 2026, formerly $25 | Mississippi Insurance Department | §83-5-73, as amended by Senate Bill 2409 (2026) |
Mississippi prices scope almost out of the equation, and that is the striking thing about this table. §27-15-87(1) charges $100 for the licence, not for the lines on it. Pearson VUE charges $50 for the examination, whether it runs 60 questions or 115. So the entire financial difference between the narrowest property and casualty authority Mississippi issues and its broadest one is twenty hours of classroom or self-study - and the difference in scope is personal risks against every risk.
That asymmetry is worth sitting with before you enrol, because it does not survive a change of mind. Upgrade in a year and you pay a second $50 to Pearson VUE, $25 to MID under §27-15-87(2) to amend the licence, and the twenty hours you deferred - roughly doubling the cost of a decision that would have been free at the outset.
Mississippi Personal Lines License Eligibility
Eighteen years of age under §83-17-61, a truthful uniform application with the statutory declaration, and 20 hours of approved pre-licensing education for the personal lines line of authority under §83-17-251(2).
The designation exemption at §83-17-251(2)(e) is written to "the property and casualty lines of authority," so an AAI, ARM, CIC or CPCU holder is exempt from the coursework here as well. As always in Mississippi, that exemption reaches the course and not the exam - the examination waivers are a different statute, §83-17-39(1)(a) through (g), and name no designations at all.
No fingerprints, no criminal history record check, no bond and no residency period. Mississippi screens producers by self-disclosure on the uniform application and by the fourteen disciplinary grounds at §83-17-71 afterwards; the Health guide owns that material.
Controlled business applies here as elsewhere: under §83-17-1(h) a violation is "deemed to be probable" where aggregate commissions on the producer's own interests, or those of family, relatives, employers, employees or business associates, exceed 35% over any 24-month period. For a personal lines producer the exposure is usually family policies rather than commercial placements, and the exception at the end of the paragraph - for lenders covering their own insurable interest - is the one that most often applies in a dwelling book written at closing.
One eligibility point specific to this line: a full Property & Casualty authority already includes personal lines, so a producer who later passes the combined exam does not need to keep a separate Personal Lines line of authority alongside it. Removing a line of authority costs the same $25 as adding one under §27-15-87(2).
Mississippi Personal Lines Continuing Education
Important CE details: 12 hours where the licence has been in effect for a term of eighteen months or less, or 24 hours including 3 of ethics for a longer term, under §83-17-251(3). A personal lines producer owes the same total as any other producer - the requirement attaches to the licence, not to the lines on it. Nothing carries forward, a repeated course counts once inside the same period, and the provider files the completion through Sircon within 15 calendar days. If you later upgrade to a full Property and Casualty authority, the CE obligation does not change; only the pre-licensing hours and a second examination stand between you and the broader licence.
§83-17-251(3) sets 12 hours where the licence has been in effect "for a term of eighteen (18) months or less" and 24 hours for a longer term, "of which three (3) hours shall have a course concentration in ethics." The ethics component belongs only to the twenty-four-hour band. MID renders those as 13-18 and 19-24 months because Mississippi's first licence term cannot be shorter than thirteen.
The obligation attaches to the licence, not to the lines on it. Adding a line of authority later does not add hours, and upgrading from Personal Lines to a full Property & Casualty authority does not change your CE burden at all - it changes only the pre-licensing hours you owe and the examination you sit.
No carryover. Surplus hours are lost at the compliance date and a repeated course earns credit once per licence period. Providers file completions to MID through Sircon within fifteen calendar days; the licensee files nothing. Online renewal opens ninety days before expiration.
For a personal lines producer, the one adjacent training requirement worth checking is flood, and it is federal rather than state: FEMA requires three hours of flood training, with documentation, if the agent has enrolled in the NFIP Agent Leads Referral Program. It is conditioned on that enrolment and is not a Mississippi CE mandate. Given how much Mississippi dwelling business sits in or near a flood zone, a good many personal lines producers will enrol and will therefore owe it - but they owe it to FEMA.
Exemptions are the five at §83-17-251(4): the §83-17-39(1)(b), (c), (e) and (g) exam-waiver categories; limited lines and limited line credit producers; non-residents meeting home-state CE where Mississippi has a reciprocal agreement with that state; non-active agents; and producers who were sixty-five or older with twenty-five or more continuous years of licensure as of 17 April 2023, on a sworn affidavit. The Property & Casualty guide owns renewal, the birth-month calendar and the late-renewal arithmetic in full.
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