What This License Is
A Pennsylvania Personal Lines authority covers property and casualty insurance written for individuals and families rather than businesses - personal auto, homeowners, renters, personal umbrella and the like. It is a full line of authority in its own right, issued by the Insurance Department on the single Pennsylvania producer licence.
The comparison that decides it is against the combined Property & Casualty exam (Series 16-06), which is 150 questions for $55 and carries commercial authority as well. Personal Lines is 100 questions for $45.
So the saving here is small - ten dollars and fifty questions. In states that require 20 or 40 hours of pre-licensing per line, Personal Lines is genuinely the efficient route because it halves the classroom time. Pennsylvania repealed pre-licensing in April 2025, and with it went most of the reason to prefer the narrower licence. What remains is a shorter exam covering a narrower syllabus.
Choose Personal Lines because your book will genuinely be personal, or because a shorter first exam gets you earning sooner. Do not choose it expecting a meaningful cost saving - Pennsylvania has largely engineered that away.
Exam Options & Format
Series 16-16: 100 scored questions in 2 hours at $45, plus five to ten unscored experimental items with no additional time. Passing is a flat 70% - a raw percentage, not a scaled score.
Two hours for 100 questions is comfortable pacing - about seventy seconds a question with time to reread the long ones. It is the same allowance every other single-line Pennsylvania exam gets.
The combined P&C exam (16-06) is 150 questions in 2 hours 50 minutes for $55 if you want commercial authority too. Note that the combined exam gives you slightly less time per question than this one.
No attempt cap, no waiting period beyond same-day rebooking, $45 per attempt, and a passing result valid for one year. A CPCU or CIC waives this exam entirely under 40 P.S. 310.4(d).
Most Tested Topics on the Pennsylvania Personal Lines Exam
Pennsylvania regulates when a personal policy may be cancelled or not renewed more tightly than most states, and it protects renewals in a way that shows up repeatedly on this exam. These are checked against the statutes:
| Concept | The Pennsylvania rule |
|---|---|
| Initial cancellation window | 60 days. During the first 60 days of a new auto policy the insurer has broader latitude to cancel - it must still state the reason and may not rely on a prohibited ground. After 60 days, cancellation narrows to enumerated grounds (40 P.S. 991.2002) |
| Cancellation notice, personal auto | At least 60 days' written notice on a permitted ground, with the specific reason stated (40 P.S. 991.2006) |
| Cancellation notice, short-form grounds | 15 days for a personal auto cancellation on the grounds in 40 P.S. 2004(1) and (2) - nonpayment of premium, and suspension or revocation of the driver's licence or registration. It is not nonpayment alone |
| Cancellation notice, homeowners | At least 30 days' written notice mid-term on a permitted ground, stating the specific reason, under the Unfair Insurance Practices Act and 31 Pa. Code Ch. 59 |
| Nonrenewal notice, personal auto | At least 60 days' advance written notice, with the reason stated (40 P.S. 991.2006) |
| Nonrenewal notice, homeowners | At least 30 days - 40 P.S. 1171.5(a)(9) and 31 Pa. Code 59.6 give property policies a single 30-day floor for cancellation and refusal to renew alike, so homeowners does not get the auto line's 60 days |
| Reason requirement | The specific reason must appear in the cancellation or nonrenewal notice - not merely be available on request |
| Not-at-fault accidents | An insurer may not increase premiums or refuse renewal on the basis of a not-at-fault accident (75 Pa.C.S. 1799.3) |
| Credit information | Unsettled - do not assume a rule. Pennsylvania's general underwriting window is 60 days, and the Department's consumer material says "an insurance company has 60 days to underwrite and investigate your application." But we could not locate an enacted Pennsylvania credit-information statute governing the use of credit at cancellation, nonrenewal or renewal rating. The "Use of Credit Information in Personal Lines Insurance Underwriting Act" is an NCOIL model that Pennsylvania has not adopted |
The number to fix in your memory is 60, because Pennsylvania uses it three separate times and they mean different things. Sixty days is the initial underwriting window during which an auto insurer has more freedom to cancel. Sixty days is the notice a permitted-cause auto cancellation requires. And sixty days is the notice a nonrenewal requires. A stem that gives you a 60-day figure is not necessarily testing the one you assume - read which event it attaches to.
The homeowners number is the one that breaks the pattern: 30 days. So the mid-term cancellation notice is longer for auto (60) than for homeowners (30), which is the reverse of most students' intuition, and nonpayment on auto compresses all the way down to 15.
The not-at-fault protection is the most quietly useful item on the list. Pennsylvania forbids using an accident the insured did not cause to justify a surcharge or a nonrenewal. That is not a notice-period question at all - it is a permitted-grounds question, and a well-written stem will hand you a perfectly proper 60-day notice attached to an improper reason. The notice is fine; the reason is not.
One caution about credit scoring, because a widely circulated "rule" appears not to be Pennsylvania law. You will find sources describing a 60-day cut-off after which a Pennsylvania insurer may not use credit to cancel, nonrenew or raise renewal rates, and a ban on adverse action for an absence of credit history. Both sentences are lifted from the NCOIL model act - a model Pennsylvania has repeatedly considered and, as far as we can establish, never enacted. What Pennsylvania does have is a general 60-day underwriting window, which is a different thing. Treat any confident statement about credit-based scoring in Pennsylvania with suspicion until you can point at a statute.
Getting Your Results - and What to Do With a Fail
You know before you stand up. PSI's bulletin is direct: "Your score will be displayed on screen at the end of the examination and a score report will be emailed to you." No waiting, no letter.
A failed report is worth more than a passing one. PSI states that "if you fail, the emailed score report will include the diagnostic report indicating your strengths and weaknesses by examination type." That is a section-by-section breakdown against the content outline rather than a bare number - and on a Personal Lines exam covering both property and casualty subjects for the personal market, it will tell you whether you lost the exam on policy forms, on Pennsylvania law, or on general principles. Those are three different problems with three different fixes.
Read it before you rebook. Pennsylvania sets no attempt cap and no waiting period, which sounds generous and functions as a trap: it is easy to spend $180 on four attempts that were really the same attempt four times. The only hard constraint is that you cannot rebook on the day you tested - PSI's worked example is fail Wednesday, call Thursday, sit again Friday.
Two clocks start when you finish, and they run in opposite directions. A passing result gives you one year to file the licence application before it expires - "you must submit your license application to the Department within one year of passing the exam." An unused registration fee is simply gone: exam fees are "NOT REFUNDABLE OR TRANSFERABLE."
The practical move on a pass is to file immediately. Pennsylvania will not accept your fingerprints until a licence application exists, so every day between passing and applying is dead time in the background check. If you tested at a centre, PSI points you at a kiosk on site to file before you leave. If you tested remotely, do it from your own machine the same afternoon.
General Pennsylvania program support at PSI is (888) 818-5822 or PAIns@psionline.com; remote proctoring has its own line at (844) 267-1017.
Pennsylvania's Temporary License
Pennsylvania issues temporary producer licences, but not as an on-ramp for new applicants. 40 P.S. 310.9 is a continuity mechanism - it exists so that a book of business does not go unserviced when the person holding the licence cannot service it.
Four situations qualify:
| Situation | Who may hold the temporary licence |
|---|---|
| A resident individual licensee dies or becomes disabled | The surviving spouse or the court-appointed personal representative |
| The designated licensee of a business entity dies or becomes disabled | An owner, partner or employee of that business entity |
| A licensee enters active armed-forces service | The licensee's designee |
| Anything else | "Any other person in an extenuating circumstance where the commissioner deems that the public interest will best be served" |
The term is capped and the licence is personal. The statute provides that "the temporary license shall be for a period not to exceed 180 days and is not transferable." Six months - enough to sell the agency, wind it down, or get someone properly licensed.
The Department keeps real discretion over it. It may require a sponsoring insurer, may limit the lines of authority the temporary licence carries, and may "immediately and without notice revoke a temporary license if it is deemed in the public interest." This is not an entitlement you file for and receive; it is a permission the Commissioner grants and can withdraw.
A caution about the Department's own paperwork. PID publishes a temporary-licence instruction sheet that is a COVID-era artefact: it still describes test centres closing in March 2020, and it still requires "24 credit hours of pre-licensing education… within the past year" - a requirement Act 142 repealed on 29 April 2025. It also cites a different IdentoGO service code (1KG8Q3) from the standard producer code. Work from the statute and call the Department; do not build a plan around that sheet.
Note what Pennsylvania does not offer: a temporary licence for someone who has not yet passed the exam and wants to start selling. With pre-licensing repealed the ordinary path is short enough that the state has not felt the need.
What It Costs
About $100 in published fees on a first-time pass: $45 to PSI and $55 to the Department. The IdentoGO fingerprint fee sits on top and no primary source publishes it.
Set against the full Property & Casualty route, the saving is modest: $45 against $55 for the exam, and the same $55 licence fee either way. Pennsylvania issues one producer licence carrying whatever lines you qualify for, so there is no per-line licence cost to avoid.
There is no course to buy. Retakes are $45 with no attempt cap, and fees are non-refundable and non-transferable.
Eligibility Requirements
Be 18 or older, commit no prohibited act, pass Series 16-16 or hold a CPCU or CIC that waives it, and satisfy the Department as to "general fitness, competence and reliability" (40 P.S. 310.6(a)). No pre-licensing course since 29 April 2025, and no statutory Pennsylvania-residence or English-literacy requirement.
Initial resident applicants are fingerprinted through IdentoGO under service code 1KGBGJ - only after passing and applying. The Casualty guide covers that sequence and why Pennsylvania destroys prints submitted out of order.
Keeping Your License Active
Important CE details: Twenty-four credits every two years from Department-approved providers.
Two-year licence expiring the last day of your birth month, 24 credit hours per cycle, at least three in ethics.
Whether the flood requirement reaches a standalone Personal Lines licence is a genuine question. Act 142 of 2024 requires at least 2 of the 24 credits in flood insurance for a licensee with a property and casualty line of authority. Pennsylvania treats Personal Lines as its own line of authority, distinct from Property and Casualty, and Act 142's flood clause names only the latter - so on a standalone Personal Lines licence the flood credits are not mandated. That reading follows the statutory text; if you also carry Property or Casualty authority they do apply, and it is worth confirming with the Department before planning a cycle around the distinction.
Carryover runs to a full cycle - up to 24 excess credits into the next period.
Nonresident reciprocity is conditional rather than automatic: 40 P.S. 310.8 exempts a nonresident who has satisfied the home state's CE if that state reciprocally recognises Pennsylvania compliance - and a nonresident who falls short at home becomes subject to Pennsylvania's own 24 hours. The Property & Casualty guide covers renewal and the late-renewal tiers.
Quick Reference
Official Links
Don't study generic. Study Pennsylvania.
You've got the roadmap. Now get the Pennsylvania-specific Personal Lines question bank, mock exams, and video course built by instructors with 20+ years teaching this material.