What This License Is
Holding Property plus Casualty authority is full P&C licensure in North Carolina — personal and commercial property, auto, general liability, workers' compensation and the commercial casualty lines. Both lines sit on one producer license, and that authority already covers personal-lines risks, so no separate Personal Lines license is needed.
Getting there takes two exams. North Carolina offers no combined Property & Casualty sitting — they are separate lines with separate $45 exams. Two sittings, $90, and they can be weeks apart, subject to the six-month application window covering both.
Since October 1, 2025 there is also no coursework. Session Law 2025-45 repealed the prelicensing requirement, which for this path meant 40 hours — 20 per line. The exams remain.
Exam Options & Format
Both exams share a shape: 55 scored questions plus 5 unscored pretest items, 1 hour 15 minutes, $45. Two sittings, 110 scored questions in total, $90 in exam fees.
The five major producer exams here are two-part — a general-knowledge section and a North Carolina section — and the handbook is clear about what that means: "the two parts are scored together, not individually." You get one overall score. There is no separate pass mark per part, no partial credit, and no carrying a passed part into a retake.
The passing standard is a scaled score of 70 on a 0-100 scale — which is not the same thing as 70% correct. The handbook is explicit: the reported score "is neither the number of questions you answered correctly nor the percentage of questions you answered correctly." Raw answers are converted onto a common scale so a marginally harder form is not a harder pass.
The two state sections are genuinely different bodies of material. Property draws on the Rate Bureau, the two residual property markets and Article 41 cancellation; Casualty draws on compulsory auto limits, the Reinsurance Facility, contributory negligence and Chapter 97 workers' compensation. Prepare them separately.
And note the order, because North Carolina inverts it. You file the NIPR application before you test. Pearson then emails an authorization carrying a six-month eligibility window, and the exam must be passed and the license issued inside that window or you reapply and pay again. There is no "your score is good for twelve months" rule here — the application is what expires.
The narrower alternative is the separate Personal Lines exam — one sitting, 80 scored questions plus 16 pretest, $45 — which covers personal auto, homeowners and personal umbrella but no commercial risk, and earns no credit toward Property or Casualty. It is a different license, not a partial one.
Most Tested Topics Across the North Carolina Property & Casualty Exams
Some North Carolina material spans both P&C exams — the insolvency safety net behind every admitted policy, the regulator's unusual constitutional position, and the claim-practice statute that governs how carriers must behave. Those are collected here; the line-specific material lives in the Property and Casualty guides.
| Concept | The North Carolina rule |
|---|---|
| P&C guaranty fund | The North Carolina Insurance Guaranty Association, Article 48 — a separate statute from the Life & Health Guaranty Association, with different limits |
| Per-claim cap | $500,000 per covered claim (G.S. 58-48-35(a)(1)) |
| Workers' compensation | Paid in full — the $500,000 cap does not apply to workers' compensation claims |
| 🚩 Minimum claim | A claim must exceed $50.00 to be a covered claim (§ 58-48-20(4)). This floor is unusual and easily tested |
| Cybersecurity claims | Capped at $500,000 per insured event, regardless of the number of claimants |
| What the Fund excludes | Life, annuity, accident and health, disability; mortgage and financial guaranty; fidelity and surety bonds; credit insurance; collateral protection; warranties and service contracts (except cybersecurity endorsements); title; ocean marine; and retroactive coverage for known losses |
| 🚩 The regulator | The Commissioner of Insurance is ELECTED statewide to a four-year term and sits on the Council of State — N.C. Constitution, Article III, § 7(1). Most states appoint |
| Where the law lives | Chapter 58 of the General Statutes, with rules in Title 11 of the Administrative Code; producer licensing is Article 33 |
| Unfair claim settlement practices | G.S. 58-63-15(11) enumerates fourteen practices, lettered (a) through (n) |
| 🚩 No day counts | G.S. 58-63-15(11) contains no statutory deadlines — every timing standard is "reasonably promptly" or "within a reasonable time." Any material asserting a specific North Carolina number of days to acknowledge or affirm a claim is wrong at the statutory level |
| Other unfair methods | Misrepresentation of policy terms, twisting, rebating, defamation of an insurer's financial condition, and boycott, coercion or intimidation |
| Civil penalties | Not less than $100 nor more than $1,000 per violation after notice and hearing — and each day a violation continues is a separate violation, with no aggregate cap (§ 58-2-70). Note the division of labour: the Commissioner orders the monetary penalty, but restitution requires a petition to the Superior Court of Wake County |
| License required | G.S. 58-33-5 — no person may "sell, solicit, or negotiate insurance in this State for any kind of insurance" without a license |
| Appointments | The insurer files within 15 days after the date the first insurance application is submitted; appointment fees renew before April 1 each year (§ 58-33-40) |
| Terminations | The insurer notifies the Commissioner within 30 days of the effective date, and notifies the producer within 15 days after notifying the Commissioner. For-cause notice goes by certified mail, return receipt requested (§ 58-33-56) |
The elected Commissioner is the easiest point on this page and the one most often assumed wrong. North Carolina's Commissioner of Insurance is chosen by the voters, statewide, for four years, under the state Constitution rather than by statute — and sits on the Council of State alongside the Governor and Attorney General. Candidates trained on national material default to "appointed by the governor," which is right almost everywhere else.
The claim-practice statute is where careful candidates get caught. National material teaches the NAIC model's timetable — acknowledge in 15 days, affirm or deny in 30 — and North Carolina simply does not have it. G.S. 58-63-15(11) speaks entirely in standards. If a question offers you a specific day count under North Carolina's unfair claim settlement practices statute, the specificity is the tell.
One more worth memorising because it is so unusual: the guaranty association's $50 minimum. A claim has to exceed fifty dollars to be a covered claim at all — a floor most states do not have, sitting underneath a $500,000 ceiling.
Moving a License Into or Out of North Carolina
North Carolina is a reciprocal state and the rules sit in a single section, G.S. 58-33-32. If you are already licensed elsewhere — or licensed here and moving away — this is what decides whether you sit an exam at all.
Moving in with an existing license. Someone previously licensed for the same lines of authority in their home state shall not be required to complete any examination. (Session Law 2025-45 tidied § 58-33-32(g) in 2025 by striking the words "prelicensing education or" — there is no longer any prelicensing education to be excused from.) Three alternative conditions satisfy it: you are currently licensed in the home state; or North Carolina receives the application within 90 days after cancellation of the home-state license, with certification of good standing; or the home-state database shows licensure in good standing.
Note the phrase the same lines of authority. A Property and Casualty licensee moving from another state carries both lines across. A Property-only licensee gets Property waived and sits the Casualty exam like anyone else.
The 90-day residency deadline. Working the other way, a person who establishes legal residence in North Carolina must apply within 90 days. Nothing prompts this — no letter arrives when you move — so if you have relocated here holding an out-of-state license, the clock is already running.
Nonresident licensing. A nonresident gets a North Carolina license if currently licensed and in good standing in the home state, submits the Uniform Application and the fees, and the home state reciprocates for North Carolina residents. The statute is emphatic on the waiver side: "The Commissioner shall waive any license application requirements for a nonresident license applicant with a valid license from the applicant's home state."
Two nonresident advantages worth knowing. First, nonresidents are exempt from fingerprinting — G.S. 58-33-48's requirement reaches resident applicants only. Second, nonresidents have no North Carolina CE requirement; NCDOI verifies good standing on the home state's continuing education through the NAIC Producer Database. You do not run two CE programmes.
Nonresident fees run on their own schedule, and it is structured differently from the resident one: $50 statutory plus $44 processing = $94 per producer line, plus $50 for each additional line and NIPR's $5.60 transaction fee, effective 05/06/2024. Reinstatement is $50 + $34 = $84. If you have seen "$94" quoted as North Carolina's license fee, that is this schedule — it is not the resident figure.
Professional designations do not waive the exam. This deserves stating plainly because it has become actively misleading. North Carolina historically granted designation exemptions — AAI, ARM, CIC and CPCU on the property-casualty side; CEBS, CFP, CLU, ChFC, LUTCF and FLMI on the life side; CEBS, HIA, REBC and RHU for accident and health — and every one of them waived prelicensing education only. They never waived the exam. Now that prelicensing itself has been repealed, those exemptions have nothing left to exempt you from. G.S. 58-33-32 contains no designation-based exam waiver, and no other section does either.
The License That Never Renews — Compliance, CE Math and Reinstatement
Start with the fact that reframes everything else. NCDOI states it without qualification: "Insurance Producer Licenses do not renew and are valid until surrendered, canceled or revoked." There is no producer renewal date, no renewal application, and no renewal fee. If you have been looking for North Carolina's renewal cycle, that is why you could not find it.
What exists instead is a continuing-education compliance cycle, and it is the thing that can end a perpetual license. Miss it and the license expires — not as a penalty for failing to renew, but because compliance is the condition on which the license continues.
Which licenses do renew. For completeness, because this trips people who hold more than one credential: adjusters, business entities, public adjusters and limited-lines entities renew April 1 each year, with a window running 60 days either side through May 30. Surplus lines renews September 1 (window July 2 to October 30). Purchasing groups renew January 1. Producer licenses are the exception, not the rule.
The CE arithmetic. 24 credit hours per two-year compliance period, including 3 hours of ethics. G.S. 58-33-130 caps it: the biennial requirement "shall not be more than 24 credit hours." Holding several lines does not multiply it — 24 covers the whole license. The ethics requirement admits no exceptions.
The cycle is keyed to two things, not one. Hours are due by the last day of your birth month — and the year alternates by birth-year parity: born in an odd year, comply in odd-numbered years; born in an even year, even-numbered years. The statute authorises exactly this, permitting the Commissioner to "establish a staggered system in which the credit hour compliance period is based on the month and year of birth." A producer born in March 1988 is due 31 March 2026, then 31 March 2028.
Flood CE. Producers holding Property or Personal Lines authority — and adjusters — must also complete 3 hours of flood (NFIP) continuing education every 4 years, due in the first compliance period and then every other period. Casualty-only producers are not caught by it.
Carryover. Hours beyond the required 24 carry forward one period, and excess ethics or flood credits carry as general credits rather than as ethics or flood. One caveat on this and on the 30-day extension below: both come from Prometric's North Carolina CE handbook, which is dated January 2020. The statutory 24-hour cap and the $75 fee are confirmed independently; the carryover and extension mechanics would be worth a call to Prometric before you rely on them.
Different vendor. CE is administered by Prometric through Compliance Express, not by Pearson VUE. Three vendors touch a North Carolina license in total: Pearson VUE gives the exams and operates NCDOI's outsourced licensing office in Durham, Prometric runs continuing education, and NIPR takes the application. Courtesy reminders come at roughly 120 days and 45 days before your compliance date.
If you miss the date. The license expires, and a 4-month (120-day) makeup window opens: complete the outstanding hours and pay a $75 reinstatement fee through Compliance Express. Do that and the license is restored. Miss the makeup window as well and the license goes inactive, which is a materially worse position.
The extension, if you see it coming. G.S. 58-33-130 lets the Commissioner or administrator "either grant an extension of time for good cause shown or charge an administrative fee of seventy-five dollars ($75.00), or both, in lieu of having the person's license lapse." In practice a $75 fee buys about 30 days past the compliance date. Seventy-five dollars paid before the deadline and seventy-five paid after buy quite different things — the first avoids the expiry, the second cures it.
Coming back from inactive. Be careful with older guidance here. The historical rule required prelicensing education and re-examination to reinstate from inactive status — but prelicensing was repealed on October 1, 2025, so half of that path no longer exists as a legal requirement. What replaces it has not been restated on a current NCDOI page. If you are reinstating from inactive status, ask NCDOI directly rather than relying on any published summary, including this one.
Exemptions. Medical exemptions (supported by a notarised physician's statement) and military exemptions (supported by Department of Defense deployment orders) exist. And nonresident producers carry no North Carolina CE obligation at all — home-state compliance is verified through the NAIC database.
What It Costs
Two exams at $45 is $90, plus the NIPR application: $82 initial resident (including the $38 criminal-record-check fee) and $50 per line of authority — $100 for the two. Roughly $270 all in on first-attempt passes, plus NIPR's transaction fee and the local fingerprinting charge.
Two costs are worth naming precisely because they are absent. There is no prelicensing cost — 40 hours of coursework for this path disappeared on October 1, 2025. And there is no renewal fee, ever, because the license does not renew. The only recurring outlay is continuing education itself.
The costs that do exist on the back end are the failure modes: $75 to reinstate after a missed compliance date, or $75 for an extension before one. And note the nonresident schedule is different and higher per line — $50 statutory plus $44 processing = $94 — so a figure quoted from that schedule does not describe what a resident pays.
Eligibility Requirements
You must be at least 18 years old and, for a resident license, live in North Carolina. There is no education requirement of any kind — the prelicensing coursework that used to gate the exam was repealed on October 1, 2025 — so the exam and the background check are the whole test.
The background side is real, though. G.S. 58-33-48 requires every resident producer applicant to give the Commissioner a complete set of fingerprints for a state and federal criminal record check, and the NIPR application carries the usual uniform disclosure questions on criminal history, administrative actions and unsatisfied judgments. A criminal history is not an automatic bar, but crimes involving fraud, dishonesty or breach of trust weigh heavily. For a P&C producer the practical addition is that both exams must be passed inside the same six-month application window if you apply for both lines at once.
Continuing Education at a Glance
Important CE details: North Carolina producer licenses do not renew — they are perpetual. What keeps one alive is CE: 24 credit hours per two-year compliance cycle, including 3 hours of ethics, due by the last day of your birth month in odd or even years matching your birth year. CE is administered by Prometric, not by Pearson VUE. Property authority brings the flood requirement with it: 3 hours of NFIP continuing education every 4 years.
24 credit hours per two-year compliance period, including 3 hours of ethics, due by the last day of your birth month in years matching your birth-year parity. Holding both Property and Casualty does not increase it. Excess hours carry forward one period. Administered by Prometric.
Property authority also brings 3 hours of flood (NFIP) CE every 4 years, due in the first compliance period and then every other one.
The compliance section above has the full mechanics — what happens when a date slips, the four-month makeup window, the $75 fees, and the caution about reinstating from inactive status now that prelicensing has been repealed.
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