What This License Is
The New Mexico Personal Lines line of authority is defined by statute as "personal lines property and casualty insurance coverage sold to individuals and families for primarily noncommercial purposes" — NMSA 1978 §59A-12-17(A)(6). Homeowners, dwelling fire, personal auto, renters, personal umbrella and personal inland marine sit inside it.
It is worth being precise about the relationship with full Property and Casualty authority, because repo material and competitor sites both get this muddled. Personal Lines is its own statutory line with its own examination (Series 18-38). Full P&C authority is broader and reaches personal-lines risks as well as commercial ones — so P&C is a superset in terms of what you may write, but Personal Lines is not merely a subdivision of a P&C licence. They are separately granted qualifications.
PSI's content outline reflects the personal focus: Property and Casualty Insurance Basics carries 26 items, Homeowners Policy Concepts 19, General Insurance Concepts 14, the Personal Automobile Policy 13, Insurance Regulation 10, Dwelling Policy Concepts 9, Other Types of Personal Insurance 7, and Federal Laws 2.
Personal Lines Exam Options in New Mexico
| Route | Exam | Items | Time | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal Lines | Series 18-38 | 100 (+5-10 unscored) | 2 hr | $75 |
| Full Property and Casualty | Series 18-31 | 150 | 2 hr 30 min | $75 |
The fee is identical, which changes the calculation. You are not choosing Personal Lines to save money — you are choosing it to sit 100 questions instead of 150 and to skip the commercial material entirely. If your book will ever include commercial auto, general liability or workers compensation, the combined paper is the better investment at the same price.
Both are offered onsite and by live online proctoring, at 70% of scored items to pass.
Most Tested Topics on the New Mexico Personal Lines Exam
Personal lines is where a state's consumer-protection rules bite hardest, and New Mexico's cancellation timetable is more granular than most. From the TESTivity New Mexico regulations curriculum, statute-verified:
| Concept | The New Mexico rule | Cite |
|---|---|---|
| Initial cancellation window | The first 60 days - a policy may be cancelled for any reason on at least 10 days' notice | §59A-18-29 |
| Cancellation after the initial window | At least 15 days' written notice, and the notice must state an enumerated reason | 13.8.4.8 NMAC |
| Substantial change in the risk | 30 days' notice - longer than the ordinary enumerated-cause notice | 13.8.4.8 NMAC |
| Cancellation for nonpayment | At least 10 days' written notice | §59A-18-29 |
| Nonrenewal | At least 30 days' written notice | 13.8.4.9 NMAC |
| The enumerated causes | Material misrepresentation or fraud, wilful or negligent acts increasing the hazard, revocation or suspension of the driver's licence of the named insured or another household or regular operator, or a fraudulent claim | 13.8.4.8 NMAC |
| Credit information, permitted use | Permitted with restrictions under the Personal Insurance Credit Information Act | §59A-17A-4 |
| Credit information, prohibited factors | An insurer may not use income, gender, address, race, colour, national origin, religion or marital status, and may not decline, cancel, nonrenew or rate solely on credit without other underwriting factors | §59A-17A-4 |
The cancellation set rewards candidates who hold four different notice periods apart rather than remembering one. New Mexico uses 10 days inside the first 60 and for nonpayment, 15 days for an enumerated cause afterwards, 30 days for a substantial change in the risk, and 30 days for nonrenewal. Questions in this area are almost always a specific fact pattern asking which clock applies.
The credit-information rules are the other reliable source of marks, and the word that carries the question is solely. New Mexico does not ban credit-based insurance scoring; it bans using credit as the only basis for an adverse action and bans a specific list of factors outright. A candidate who answers that New Mexico prohibits credit scoring is as wrong as one who answers that it is unrestricted.
Your Results, and What Happens If You Fail
You find out immediately. PSI displays your score on screen at the end of the examination and emails a score report; the report is also available in your PSI online account. There is no waiting period and no letter in the post.
The pass mark is a raw 70%. New Mexico is one of the states where that number means exactly what it appears to mean — 70% of the scored items. The bulletin contains no scaled-score language whatsoever. If you have prepared for other states you may have been warned that a reported score is "neither the number nor the percentage of questions answered correctly"; that warning does not apply here.
Remember the unscored items. Five to ten experimental questions may be embedded on top of the 100 in the outline. They do not count, you cannot identify them, and they are the reason the paper feels slightly longer than advertised. Do not budget your two hours as though there are exactly 100 questions.
A failure comes with a diagnostic. The emailed report on a failed attempt includes a breakdown of strengths and weaknesses by examination type. This is the most useful thing PSI gives you and most candidates skim it. Read it against the content outline, find the two weakest sections, and study those rather than starting the whole syllabus again.
You may retake as soon as the next day — there is no cooling-off period between individual attempts. But each attempt is another $75, and the fee is non-refundable and non-transferable.
The fourth failure is the expensive one. Under NMSA 1978 §59A-11-6(E), an individual "who has taken and failed to pass four of the same examinations shall not be entitled to take another examination until after six months after the date of the last examination failed." This is statute, not vendor policy — PSI cannot waive it. Six months is long enough that most candidates in that position have to relearn material they had nearly mastered, which is the real cost.
Two clocks start when you pass. The passing score supports a licence application for one year; OSI must receive the complete application and fee inside it. Separately, the exam fee is valid one year from the date of payment. They are different periods measured from different events.
What the Personal Lines Licence Costs
$75 per attempt — the same as the 150-question combined paper — plus $30 for the resident producer licence (§59A-6-1), $20 per insurer appointment and $60 biennial continuation.
Because attempts are individually priced and the fourth failure triggers a statutory six-month bar, the cost of under-preparing here is not linear. Three failures and a pass is $300 in exam fees; four failures is $300 and half a year.
NIPR's transaction fee and the fingerprint charge are additional and are not published by the state.
Eligibility
At least 18 (§59A-12-12), a pass on Series 18-38, and a state and federal fingerprint background check. No pre-licensing course is required in New Mexico.
Apply through NIPR within one year of passing. New Mexico verifies the exam result before it will accept an application, so the sequence is fixed: exam, then application.
Note that the designation waivers New Mexico recognises — C.L.U. and C.P.C.U. — are written in terms of the life, annuity, accident and health, property and casualty examinations. Whether a C.P.C.U. reaches a Personal Lines application specifically is not addressed in the rule text, and is one of the questions flagged for OSI on this build.
Continuing Education for Personal Lines Producers
Important CE details: Three of the 24 hours must be ethics, leaving 21 general. Credit hours cannot be carried over into the next compliance period. The specialty trainings listed at 13.4.7.10(C)(2) NMAC - stop loss (8 hours), flood (4 hours) and long-term care (8 initial, then 4 per compliance period) - count toward the 24 rather than sitting on top of it. Annuity product training is a separate requirement under 13.9.20 NMAC and is not part of that clause.
24 hours every two years, 3 of them ethics, no carryover, expiring the last day of your birth month.
13.4.7.10(C)(2)(b) NMAC sets four credit hours of flood-specific training, phrased in the rule as a one-time requirement rather than a recurring one. OSI's CE webpage still prints three hours, and whether the requirement reaches a Personal Lines licensee specifically is flagged for confirmation on this build.
Holding Personal Lines alongside another line does not increase the requirement — 24 hours covers the licence, not each line on it.
Quick Reference
Official Links
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