The Mississippi Property & Casualty Producer License
Mississippi lists Property at §83-17-63(1)(c) and Casualty at §83-17-63(1)(d) as separate lines of authority, and offers a combined examination that qualifies you for both. There is no separate "P&C" line in the statute; there is a licence carrying two lines and one exam that gets you there. A full Property and Casualty authority already includes personal-lines risks, so the narrower Personal Lines line at §83-17-63(1)(f) is a subset you would not hold alongside it.
The combined exam is 90 scored questions plus 10 unscored pretest questions in 150 minutes, at 70% - sixty-three of the ninety scored items. Taken separately, Property and Casualty are 60 scored questions each in 120 minutes, at the same 70%. The combined route asks ninety scored questions where the separate route asks a hundred and twenty, and it costs one $50 examination fee instead of two.
Pre-licensing is 40 hours. §83-17-251(2) requires "twenty (20) hours of approved prelicensing education courses per line of authority," and candidate handbook #122500 prints the arithmetic explicitly for this route: "Property and Casualty Producer: 40 hours classroom or self-study." The House Bill 819 exemption enacted in 2024 reaches applicants for the life line "only" and has no application here at all. The Life & Health guide owns the pre-licensing material - formats, provider rules, the proctored self-study examination - in full.
Substantively, this is the licence where two Mississippi peculiarities matter most. The first is the guaranty association, whose caps the Legislature rewrote in 2025 into a structure no national course teaches. The second is what Mississippi does not have: no unfair claims settlement practices act, no claim-handling regulation for property and casualty claims, and no premium trust account requirement for producers. In each case the negative is the answer.
Combined or Separate on the Property and Casualty Side
The combined exam. 90 scored plus 10 pretest, 150 minutes, 70% to pass. That is a hundred items in two and a half hours, or 90 seconds each - noticeably tighter than the single-line exams' 70 items in two hours, about 103 seconds each, though not as tight as the combined Life and Accident & Health exam's 125 items in 150 minutes, about 72 seconds.
Money and risk, the same trade as everywhere in Mississippi. One $50 fee rather than two. The same $100 licence fee either way, because §27-15-87(1) charges for the licence and not per line - but only if you file both lines together. Adding the second line as a later transaction costs another $50 examination fee plus $25 to amend under §27-15-87(2). Against that, a failed combined attempt costs you both lines.
Coursework is 40 hours whichever route you take, since the statute counts hours per line of authority rather than per examination. There is no coursework saving in the combined exam; the saving is in fees and seat time.
OnVUE is available for this exam. Mississippi's current 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 owns remote testing and covers the two-attempt cap and the fourteen-day wait before retesting in full - and those limits are the main reason to choose a test centre instead, where the handbook requires only a one-day wait and states that "Testing at a test center is unlimited."
Cancellation. Forty-eight hours' notice to Pearson VUE on (888) 293-4222, or the $50 is forfeited. With notice you may transfer the fee to a new reservation or request a refund.
Most Tested Topics on the Mississippi Property & Casualty Exam
Two subjects dominate the Mississippi Laws portion of the combined exam: the guaranty association, whose limits were amended in July 2025 and are now more granular than most states', and the regulatory framework itself - who the Commissioner is, what the unfair trade practices statute contains and, just as testable, what it does not.
| Concept | Mississippi rule | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| P&C guaranty cap, general covered claims | Not exceeding $300,000 per claimant, on amounts in excess of $50 | §83-23-115(1)(a)(iii) |
| P&C guaranty cap, property damage claims | Not exceeding $400,000 per claimant - a separate and higher cap added effective 1 July 2025 | §83-23-115(1)(a)(iv) |
| P&C guaranty cap, cybersecurity coverage | $300,000 for all first- and third-party claims arising out of a single insured event, "regardless of the number of claims made or the number of claimants" - an event cap, not a per-claimant cap | §83-23-115(1)(a)(v) |
| P&C guaranty, workers' compensation | "The full amount of a covered claim for benefits under a workers' compensation insurance coverage" - uncapped | §83-23-115(1)(a)(i) |
| P&C guaranty, the $50 | A statutory FLOOR, not a deductible - the association pays only amounts "in excess of Fifty Dollars ($50.00)", separately for unearned premium, general claims and property damage claims | §83-23-115(1)(a)(ii)-(iv) |
| P&C guaranty, the net-worth exclusion | Mississippi does NOT apply a net-worth test to its own claimants - it declines a claim "that has been rejected or denied by any other state guaranty fund based upon that state's statutory exclusions regarding the insured's net worth" | §83-23-109(f) - long-standing law, not a 2025 change |
| Unfair trade practices, how many acts | Exactly NINE, (a) through (i) - misrepresentation and false advertising of policy contracts, false information and advertising generally, defamation, boycott/coercion/intimidation, false financial statements, stock operations and advisory board contracts, unfair discrimination, designation of agent/solicitor/insurer, and a cross-reference | §83-5-35 |
| Unfair CLAIMS settlement practices | Mississippi has adopted none - §83-5-35 contains no claims list, no Title 19 chapter supplies one, and the NAIC records "no current activity" for Model 900 | absence of authority |
| Rebating, how it reaches §83-5-35 | Only through item (i), which reads "[a]ny violation of Sections 83-3-33 and 83-3-121" - two cross-references, not one; §83-3-121 sits in the CASUALTY INSURANCE RATES article | §83-5-35(i); §83-3-121 |
| The regulator | An elected Commissioner of Insurance, chosen "at the general election as other state officers" for a four-year term - a STATUTORY office, not a constitutional one | §83-1-3 |
| The Commissioner's second hat | "The Commissioner of Insurance is by virtue of his office the State Fire Marshal" | §45-11-1 |
| Licence term and renewal basis | Biennial, expiring the last day of the licensee's birth month; business entity licences expire 31 May; online renewal opens 90 days before expiration | §83-17-63; MID |
| Late renewal arithmetic | Reinstatement within twelve months of the renewal due date without a written examination, at the $100 fee plus "fifty per cent thereof" - $150 | §§83-17-63, 27-15-215 |
| Controlled business | 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 | §83-17-1(h) |
| Producer penalty ceiling and grounds | A civil penalty "not to exceed One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00) per violation", on fourteen grounds (a) through (n), as an alternative to probation, suspension, revocation or refusal | §83-17-71(1) |
The guaranty caps are the highest-value cluster on this exam, and the reason is that Mississippi rewrote them recently and unevenly. Before 1 July 2025 the answer was a single $300,000 per claimant with workers' compensation paid in full. Senate Bill 2894 of 2025 kept those and added two more: a $400,000 cap for property damage claims at subparagraph (iv), and a $300,000 cap for cybersecurity coverage at subparagraph (v). Note that (v) behaves differently from the others - it is stated per single insured event across all claimants and all claims, while (iii) and (iv) are per claimant. A candidate who has learned "Mississippi caps guaranty claims at $300,000" now has one of four possible answers, and the exam is likely to ask which.
The $50 is the item most often mis-stated, including in older editions of this guide. It is not a deductible in the policy sense and it is not subtracted once. The statute obliges the association to pay only "[a]n amount in excess of Fifty Dollars ($50.00)" and repeats that formula separately for unearned-premium claims at (ii), for general claims at (iii) and for property damage claims at (iv). It is a floor, applied per claim category.
The net-worth row is a genuine Mississippi peculiarity and it runs opposite to the way most candidates will read it. Many state guaranty acts exclude claims by insureds above a net-worth threshold. Mississippi does not do that. What §83-23-109(f) does - and it has done so since well before the 2025 amendments; the sentence is already in the 2023 Code, and Senate Bill 2894's change to §83-23-109 was to add a new subsection defining cybersecurity insurance - is refuse a claim "that has been rejected or denied by any other state guaranty fund based upon that state's statutory exclusions regarding the insured's net worth." It is an anti-forum-shopping provision, not a net-worth test. If an item asks whether Mississippi applies a net-worth exclusion to guaranty claimants, the answer is no.
The unfair trade practices rows reward counting rather than recalling. §83-5-35 has exactly nine lettered items, (a) through (i), and its source note - "Codes, 1942, § 5649-04; Laws, 1956, ch. 329, § 4" - tells you why: it is the 1956 NAIC model, cosmetically touched in 2010 and never expanded. The unfair claims settlement practices list that most states added in the 1970s is simply not there, and Mississippi adopted no separate act to supply it. Rebating gets in only through item (i)'s cross-reference to §§83-3-33 and 83-3-121 - two sections, not one. And note that rebating in life insurance is separately prohibited by §83-7-3, which §83-5-35 does not cross-reference at all, so "rebating is regulated only through §83-5-35(i)" is true of that section and false of Mississippi law as a whole.
Mississippi Reciprocity, Waivers and Incoming Producers
Mississippi is generous to a producer arriving with an existing licence and stingy to a producer arriving with a designation, and candidates consistently expect the opposite.
§83-17-67 waives both the coursework and the examination. The operative sentence is unqualified: "An individual who applies for an insurance producer license in this state who was previously licensed for the same lines of authority in another state shall not be required to complete any prelicensing education or examination." Both, not one.
But there are two different ninety-day triggers, and guides routinely merge them. The first concerns a lapsed out-of-state licence: the waiver is available where the applicant applies "within ninety (90) days of the cancellation of the applicant's previous license" and the prior state certifies the licence was in good standing, or where NAIC records show the producer "is or was licensed in good standing for the line of authority requested." The second concerns relocation: a person licensed elsewhere who moves to Mississippi must "make application within ninety (90) days of establishing legal residence," and "[n]o prelicensing education or examination shall be required" for the lines previously held, "except where the commissioner determines otherwise by regulation." Cancellation of a licence and establishment of residence are different events on different dates; know which one your ninety days is running from.
The waiver does not reach continuing education. §83-17-67 never mentions it. The waiver is an entry-side provision: once you hold a Mississippi resident licence, you are on the ordinary §83-17-251(3) cycle like everybody else, on the biennial birth-month calendar. An incoming producer who assumes their home-state CE compliance carries over is thinking of §83-17-251(4)(c), which is a non-resident exemption and is conditioned on Mississippi having a reciprocal agreement with that state - it does not apply once you have become a Mississippi resident licensee.
The two waiver lists are completely disjoint, and this is the single most valuable thing on this page. Mississippi has an examination waiver statute and a pre-licensing exemption statute, and they overlap in exactly nothing.
§83-17-39(1) waives the WRITTEN EXAMINATION for seven categories, (a) through (g), and not one of them is a professional designation: (a) renewal applicants, unless the Commissioner determines otherwise or the licence lapsed more than a year; (b) a "ticket-selling agent of a railroad or steamship company, carrier by air, or public bus carrier" selling accident tickets; (c) credit life and credit health and accident written on borrowers only; (d) at the Commissioner's discretion, applicants suspended less than a year previously; (e) "[a]n applicant who is an agent of a fraternal benefit society exclusively"; (f) applicants exempt under §83-17-67; and (g) credit property insurance on borrowers only. Every entry is a status or a transaction category.
§83-17-251(2)(c) through (e) exempts only the PRE-LICENSING COURSEWORK, and it is where the designations live: CEBS, CHFC, CIC, CFP, CLU, FLMI and LUTCF for the life line; RHU, CEBS, REBC and HIA for accident and health or sickness; and AAI, ARM, CIC and CPCU for the property and casualty lines. CEBS appears in both the life and health lists; CIC appears in both the life and the property and casualty lists.
So: a CPCU holder in Mississippi skips forty hours of classroom instruction and still sits the ninety-question examination. So does an ARM, an AAI and a CIC. That is worth knowing before you pay for a course you do not need, and it is worth knowing before you assume a designation gets you licensed here without testing. If an exam item offers "a CPCU is exempt from the Mississippi Property and Casualty examination," it is false.
Nonresident licensing. A producer resident in another state who wants Mississippi authority without moving files as a nonresident through NIPR or Sircon on the basis of the home-state licence; MID verifies through the NAIC database. Nonresidents are exempt from Mississippi CE under §83-17-251(4)(c) where they meet their home state's requirement and Mississippi has a reciprocal agreement with that state.
Temporary licences fill the gap when a licensed producer dies, becomes disabled or is called up. §83-17-69 authorises a temporary licence "for a period not to exceed one hundred eighty (180) days without requiring an examination" - to the surviving spouse or court-appointed representative of a deceased or disabled producer; to a member or employee of a licensed business entity on the death or disability of its designated individual; to the designee of a producer entering active military service; or in any other circumstance the Commissioner finds serves the public interest. The Commissioner may limit the temporary licensee's authority "in any way deemed necessary to protect insureds and the public," may require a licensed sponsor to assume responsibility for the temporary licensee's acts, and may revoke where the public interest is endangered. The hard stop is transactional rather than temporal: "[a] temporary license may not continue after the owner or the personal representative disposes of the business." Do not confuse this with the Temporary Industrial Life licence, a different creature at 120 days and $100, issuable once.
Renewing a Mississippi Producer License
Mississippi's renewal regime has an odd shape on paper and a simple one in practice, and it is worth seeing both.
The statute reads as though the licence never expires. §83-17-63 provides that "[a]n insurance producer license shall remain in effect unless revoked or suspended as long as the fee set forth in Section 27-15-87 is paid and education requirements for resident individual producers are met by the due date." That is perpetual-licence drafting. What makes it a biennial licence in practice is the way MID administers the fee and the education due date - keyed to the licensee's birth month - rather than an expiry clause in that sentence.
The calendar. Producer licences are biennial, expiring on the last day of the licensee's birth month. Business entity licences run on a different date entirely and expire 31 May. Online renewal opens 90 days before expiration.
Your first term is set by the calendar, not by you. Because the expiry is pinned to your birth month, a licence issued shortly after your birth month runs nearly two years to its first expiry, while one issued shortly before runs a little over a year. MID publishes the bands in exactly those terms on its Pre-Licensing and Continuing Education page: "For Licenses in effect for 13-18 months: 12 hours of continuing education is required" and "For Licenses in effect for 19-24 months: 24 hours of continuing education including three hours of ethics." A Mississippi first term cannot run shorter than thirteen months, which is why the chart starts there.
Which CE band you are in follows from that. §83-17-251(3) requires 12 hours where the licence has been in effect "for a term of eighteen (18) months or less" and 24 hours where it has been in effect "for a term of more than eighteen (18) months," the latter including 3 hours of ethics. So the same producer can owe 12 hours in their first cycle and 24 in every cycle afterwards, purely because of where their birth month fell. Check your dates before buying a bundle.
The fee. Renewal costs the same $100 privilege fee as the original licence, under §27-15-87(1). Holding more lines of authority does not increase it, because the fee attaches to the licence.
Missing the deadline. §83-17-63 gives a twelve-month grace: "[a]n individual insurance producer who allows his or her license to lapse may, within twelve (12) months from the due date of the renewal fee, reinstate the same license without the necessity of passing a written examination." The penalty is set by cross-reference - "[t]he penalty for such late renewal shall be in compliance with Section 27-15-215" - and §27-15-215 fixes it at the tax required for the business "and fifty per cent thereof." Fifty percent of $100 is $50, so late reinstatement inside twelve months costs $150. MID states the same figure two ways across its pages, once as a "50% penalty" and once as a "[l]ate fee of $50"; those are consistent, not contradictory.
Past twelve months there is no reinstatement. MID's position is that a resident producer is no longer eligible to reinstate and must complete a new pre-licensing course and pass the examination again. On this licence that means forty hours and a ninety-question exam, to recover a licence you already held. It is the single most expensive administrative mistake available to a Mississippi producer, and it is entirely avoidable by watching a birth month.
What CE compliance actually involves. Nothing carries forward - surplus hours are lost at the compliance date, and a course repeated inside the same licence period earns credit only once. Your provider files, not you: approved providers submit completions to MID through Sircon, within fifteen calendar days for continuing education. (Pre-licensing completions run on a shorter five-calendar-day clock; the Life & Health guide covers that.) Keep your certificates regardless, and keep a current email address with MID - renewal notices and the licence itself arrive by email.
Exemptions from CE 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 who meet the CE requirement of the state in which they reside, where Mississippi has a reciprocal agreement with that state; non-active agents as defined in §83-17-1; and an individual who is sixty-five or older and has been continuously licensed for twenty-five years or more as of 17 April 2023, evidenced by a sworn affidavit on the Commissioner's form. That last exemption is grandfathered to a fixed date - a producer who reaches twenty-five years in 2027 does not qualify, however old they are.
Appointments are separate from renewal and are the carrier's obligation. The appointment fee rose from $25 to $50 effective 1 July 2026 under Senate Bill 2409, which amended §83-5-73; the increase rides inside the Strengthen Mississippi Homes Act, a hurricane-mitigation bill, with $25 going to the State General Fund and $25 to the Strengthen Mississippi Homes Fund. You do not need an appointment to hold the licence, and you do not pay for it. Note that MID's Licensing Forms and Fees page still prints "Certificate of Authority (appointment) - $25.00", and its Licensing Appointments page carries both figures at once.
Mississippi Property & Casualty License Fees
| Item | Amount | Paid to | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-licensing course | 40 hours, provider-priced | Approved education provider | §83-17-251(2); handbook #122500 |
| Property and Casualty examination | $50 - one fee for both lines | Pearson VUE | Handbook #122500 fee table |
| Resident producer licence | $100 per licence, both lines included | Mississippi Insurance Department | §27-15-87(1) |
| Portal transaction fee | About $1 | NIPR or Sircon | NIPR and Sircon fee schedules |
| Biennial renewal | $100 | Mississippi Insurance Department | §§83-17-63, 27-15-87(1) |
| Late renewal within twelve months | $150 - the fee plus "fifty per cent thereof" | Mississippi Insurance Department | §§83-17-63, 27-15-215 |
| Amending a line of authority, or a duplicate licence | $25 | Mississippi Insurance Department | §27-15-87(2) |
| Business entity licence | $200, with $50 to amend | Mississippi Insurance Department | §27-15-85(1), (2) |
| Surplus lines producer licence | $100 biennially, no examination and no bond in §83-21-19 | Mississippi Insurance Department | §83-21-19(2), (4) |
| Fingerprinting | Not required for producers | - | no producer authority in Title 83 |
The two rows agency owners most often merge are the individual and the entity. An individual producer pays $100 under §27-15-87(1) and $25 to amend under §27-15-87(2). A business entity pays $200 under §27-15-85(1) and $50 to amend under §27-15-85(2). Different section, different numbers, and both are owed where the owner licenses themselves and their agency.
Mississippi Property & Casualty License Eligibility
Eighteen years of age under §83-17-61; a truthful uniform application carrying the declaration that the statements made are "true, correct and complete"; and 40 hours of approved pre-licensing education for the two lines, unless an exemption at §83-17-251(2) applies.
The designation exemption at §83-17-251(2)(e) covers a current and valid AAI, ARM, CIC or CPCU "for the property and casualty lines of authority" - plural, so it reaches the whole combined route. It exempts the coursework and nothing else; the examination waivers at §83-17-39(1) name no designations. The degree exemption at §83-17-251(2)(b) reaches an individual holding "a bachelor's degree with major coursework in insurance from an accredited institution of higher learning," and is not written to a particular line.
Incoming producers are covered by §83-17-67 and are the one group who may need neither the coursework nor the exam - see the reciprocity section above for the two ninety-day triggers and what each one requires.
No fingerprints, no criminal history record check, no bond, no residency period, no minimum net worth. Mississippi screens producers by self-disclosure on the uniform application and by the fourteen disciplinary grounds at §83-17-71 afterwards; the Health guide walks the background questions and the grounds in detail.
Controlled business under §83-17-1(h) is the eligibility constraint most likely to bite a commercial producer. 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 rolling 24-month period. A producer whose book is dominated by the property and casualty programme of a single employer or affiliated group should track that ratio deliberately. The paragraph excepts a person "employed by or associated with a motor vehicle sales agency with respect to insurance on a motor vehicle sold, serviced or financed by it," and sales by "a lender or its affiliate covering the insurable interest of the lender."
Premium handling is worth knowing before you hold any money. Mississippi imposes no premium trust account and no fiduciary account requirement on producers - there is no such chapter in Title 19 and no such section in Title 83 reaching producers. What it imposes instead is 19 Miss. Admin. Code Pt. 1, R. 11.01, printed in capitals in the rule itself: "ALL PREMIUM CHECKS SHALL BE MADE PAYABLE TO THE INSURANCE COMPANY WRITING SUCH POLICY OF INSURANCE." The chapter also requires an authorised company receipt on an approved printed form. The only producer-level control on misuse is after the fact: ground (d) at §83-17-71 for "[i]mproperly withholding, misappropriating or converting any monies or properties received in the course of doing insurance business."
Mississippi Property & Casualty 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 - §83-17-251(3) keys the requirement to term length, and the ethics component belongs only to the 24-hour band. Holding both Property and Casualty does not double it; the requirement attaches to the licence rather than to the lines on it. Nothing carries forward, a repeated course counts once inside the same period, and providers file completions through Sircon within 15 calendar days. Miss a renewal and you have twelve months to reinstate at $150 with no re-examination; past twelve months MID's position is that a resident is not eligible to reinstate and must complete pre-licensing education again - forty hours, on this licence - and re-sit the exam.
§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 is attached only to the twenty-four-hour sentence. Because Mississippi pins expiry to your birth month, which band you land in for a first cycle is a function of the calendar - the renewal section above explains how MID works it out.
Holding two lines does not double it. The obligation attaches to the producer licence rather than to the lines of authority on it, so Property and Casualty together owe the same twenty-four hours as either alone. Adjusters hold a separate licence type with its own requirement; bail agents run on a wholly different track of sixteen hours over two years, with none in the first year of an original licence.
No carryover. Surplus hours are lost at the compliance date, and "[l]icensees may repeat courses, but will receive credits only once when the course is repeated during the same license period." Approved providers file completions to MID through Sircon within fifteen calendar days of the completion date.
Flood training is federal. FEMA requires three hours of flood training, with documentation, where the agent has signed up for the NFIP Agent Leads Referral Program; MID carries it through Bulletin 2007-2. It is conditioned on that enrolment and is not a Mississippi CE mandate - which matters on a licence where a great deal of the property book sits near water.
Nothing else attaches to this licence. There is no Mississippi surplus lines CE requirement, no workers' compensation producer training requirement, and no property or casualty product-specific training rule. The one training mandate Mississippi does impose - the one-time four-credit annuity course at 19 Miss. Admin. Code Pt. 2, R. 18.07(B)(1) - lives on the life side and reaches you only if you add the Life line.
Exemptions are the five at §83-17-251(4), set out in the renewal section above. Note in particular subsection (c) for non-residents, which is conditioned on a reciprocal agreement between Mississippi and the producer's home state and is unavailable once you become a Mississippi resident licensee.
Quick Reference
Official Links
Don't study generic. Study Mississippi.
You've got the roadmap. Now get the Mississippi-specific P&C question bank, mock exams, and video course built by instructors with 20+ years teaching this material.