What This License Is
A Pennsylvania Property and Allied Lines authority covers insurance against loss of or damage to real and personal property - homeowners, dwelling fire, commercial property, inland marine and the allied coverages that ride with them. It is one line on a single Pennsylvania producer licence issued by the Insurance Department.
Pennsylvania offers this line three different ways, which is unusual. You can take Property alone (Series 16-04), Casualty alone (16-05), or the combined Property & Casualty exam (16-06) in a single sitting - and there is also the narrower Personal Lines line (16-16) for producers writing only individual and family risks. Most states force one structure; Pennsylvania lets you pick.
The arithmetic favours the combined exam. Property alone and Casualty alone are $45 each - $90 for the pair. The combined 16-06 is $55 for both lines in one sitting. Taking this line by itself makes sense only if commercial liability is genuinely outside your practice.
Where the standalone Property line does earn its keep is as half of the surplus lines prerequisite. Pennsylvania's surplus lines licence requires an underlying property and casualty licence, and that path is covered in full further down this page.
Exam Options & Format
Series 16-04: 100 scored questions in 2 hours, $45 an attempt, plus five to ten unscored experimental items with no extra time allowed for them. Passing is a flat 70% - PSI publishes no scaled score for Pennsylvania.
You can sit it at one of PSI's Pennsylvania test centres or by Remote Proctored modality from home; the Accident & Health guide covers the remote rules, including the fact that no breaks are permitted.
No attempt cap. PSI's bulletin is explicit: "There is no limit to the number of times you may take an examination if you fail." You cannot rebook on the day you tested, but PSI's own example has a Wednesday failure retesting on Friday. Each attempt is another $45, and fees are "NOT REFUNDABLE OR TRANSFERABLE."
A CPCU or CIC waives this exam outright under 40 P.S. 310.4(d) - the CPCU covers property, casualty and accident-and-health, the CIC covers life, accident-and-health and property-and-casualty. With pre-licensing repealed, a waiver now removes the entire remaining requirement. The Life & Health guide has the full table.
A passing result is good for one year, which is your window to file the licence application.
Most Tested Topics on the Pennsylvania Property Exam
Pennsylvania's property market is shaped by an inland Mid-Atlantic risk profile and a rate regime that is stricter than most. These are checked against the statutes and the Department:
| Concept | The Pennsylvania rule |
|---|---|
| Rate regulation | Property and casualty rates are filed with the Insurance Department under the Casualty and Surety and Fire rate-regulatory acts (40 P.S. 1181-1199), and may be disapproved if excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory |
| Credit-based insurance scoring | Unsettled - we could not source a Pennsylvania statute. The widely quoted rule (permitted at underwriting, unusable after 60 days, never adverse for an absence of credit history) is NCOIL model-act language that Pennsylvania appears never to have enacted. Pennsylvania does have a general 60-day underwriting window; that is a different rule |
| FAIR Plan | YES - the Insurance Placement Facility of Pennsylvania, marketed as the PA FAIR Plan, created by Act 233 of 1968 effective 1 August 1968. It is an association of the property insurers doing business in Pennsylvania, serving those with an insurable interest in Pennsylvania property who cannot obtain coverage voluntarily. Lines include fire, homeowners, renters, property, and vacant and seasonal property |
| Dominant catastrophe perils | Severe thunderstorms with straight-line wind and hail, winter storms, riverine flooding, and the remnants of tropical systems - an inland profile with no direct coastal hurricane landfall risk |
| Surplus lines prerequisite | A surplus lines producer licence, which requires an underlying property and casualty licence - and, for residents, its own examination with "no exemptions or exceptions" |
| Surplus lines diligent effort | Three documented declinations from admitted insurers (31 Pa. Code 124.5). An insurer's non-response counts as a declination after 5 business days, declinations must be recorded at or near the time of receipt, and records are retained 5 years after the contract terminates |
| Surplus lines premium tax | 3% of gross premiums, reported on RCT-123 and due 31 January of the following year - the Department of Revenue notes the enabling statute provides no exemptions from the tax |
| Export List | The Department maintains an Export List of coverages unavailable in the authorised market, which excepts a risk from the diligent-search requirement |
The FAIR Plan is the correction worth making loudest, because the opposite claim circulates widely - including in study material that flatly states Pennsylvania has no FAIR Plan and that high-risk property owners must go to surplus lines. Pennsylvania has had one since 1968. The Insurance Placement Facility is the insurer of last resort for basic property coverage, and a question asking where a Philadelphia homeowner turns after three declinations has an admitted-market answer, not a surplus-lines one.
On credit scoring, we are going to tell you what we could not verify rather than repeat what everyone else prints. A specific rule circulates widely for Pennsylvania: credit usable at initial underwriting, unusable after 60 days for cancellation, nonrenewal or renewal rating, and never adverse merely because an applicant has no credit history. Every clause of that is NCOIL model-act wording, and Pennsylvania's attempts to adopt the model died as unenacted bills. We could not find it in Title 40 or 31 Pa. Code, and the Department's own consumer material describes only a general 60-day underwriting window with nothing about credit. If your exam material states the rule confidently, ask where the statute is.
On catastrophe exposure, note the shape rather than a number: Pennsylvania is the rare large eastern state with no coastal hurricane landfall risk. Its property losses come from convective storms, winter weather and river flooding, which is why its residual market is a FAIR Plan rather than a coastal windstorm pool of the kind Texas and Florida operate.
Where You Can Take the Exam in Pennsylvania
PSI prints its Pennsylvania test-centre addresses in the candidate bulletin - not every state's handbook does - and coverage is genuinely statewide rather than clustered in the two big metros.
| Region | Site |
|---|---|
| Philadelphia area | One Bala Avenue, Suite 310, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004 |
| Philadelphia suburbs | 601 South Henderson Road, Suite 205, King of Prussia, PA 19406 |
| Bucks County | 1200 Veteran's Highway, Suite B4, Bristol, PA 19007 |
| Lehigh Valley | 961 Macron Blvd, Suite 101, Allentown, PA 18109 |
| Lancaster County | 12 Keystone Court, Suite 12, Leola, PA 17540 |
| Harrisburg | 4309 Linglestown Rd, Suite 114, Harrisburg, PA 17112 |
| Scranton area | 1125 Lackawanna Trail, Routes 6 & 11, Clarks Summit, PA 18411 |
| Pittsburgh | Towne Center, 1789 South Braddock Avenue, Suite 296, Pittsburgh, PA 15218 |
| Westmoreland County | DiCesare Building, 116 E. Pittsburgh St., Suite 101, Greensburg, PA 15601 |
| Butler County | 485 Airport Rd, Butler County Airfield, Butler, PA 16002 |
| Erie | 2700 W. 21st Street, Suites 21 & 22, Erie, PA 16506 |
Treat that as a snapshot rather than a live roster. It comes from the bulletin edition effective 22 January 2026, and PSI opens, closes and moves sites. The authoritative view is the availability screen at `test-takers.psiexams.com/pain/available/test` when you book.
Arrive 30 minutes early. PSI's instruction for Pennsylvania is "arrive 30 minutes before your appointment" - more lead time than the fifteen minutes many states ask - and the consequences of being late are absolute: you forfeit the fee if you "arrive after examination start time."
Reschedule at least two days out. "You may cancel and reschedule an examination appointment without forfeiting your fee if your cancellation notice is received 2 days before the scheduled examination date." Anything later and the $45 is gone.
One thing a test centre gives you that testing from home does not: a kiosk. PSI's bulletin directs candidates to "use the kiosk at the PSI test site to complete your license application online" immediately after passing - which matters more in Pennsylvania than elsewhere, because your fingerprints cannot be taken until the application is on file. Testing in person and filing at the kiosk collapses two steps into one morning.
Surplus Lines: The Path from a Property License
Pennsylvania runs a substantial excess-and-surplus market, and unlike some states it treats surplus lines as a separate licence with its own examination rather than an endorsement you can talk your way onto.
The prerequisite is a property and casualty licence. The Department's own requirements sheet is explicit that you must first hold a Pennsylvania property/casualty producer licence - so in practice that is this line plus Casualty, or the combined 16-06.
Resident applicants must pass the surplus lines exam, and there is no way around it. The Department states the requirement with "no exemptions or exceptions" - which is striking given that CPCU and CIC holders can waive the underlying property and casualty exams entirely. The designation gets you to the door and no further. The exam is Series 16-09: 60 scored questions in 1 hour at $45.
Nonresidents take a different route: they must already be licensed for surplus lines in their home state. And surplus lines applicants are not fingerprinted - the requirement reaches initial resident producer applicants, not this add-on.
The licence itself is expensive by Pennsylvania standards. An individual surplus lines licence (form IDL-21) is $200, as is a business entity licence (IDL-22) - against $55 for the underlying resident producer licence. Renewal is $200 on time and $400 if lapsed.
Diligent effort means three declinations, and the mechanics are unusually specific. 31 Pa. Code 124.5 deems a diligent effort made "if the writing producer has documented a declination of coverage from at least three admitted insurers." Three details make Pennsylvania's version distinctive: declinations must be recorded at or near the time of receipt rather than reconstructed later; an insurer that simply does not respond counts as a declination after 5 business days, which stops a slow market from blocking a placement; and the records are kept 5 years after the contract terminates.
Two documents, two different people. The writing producer executes and forwards a written statement in Department-prescribed form declaring that a diligent effort to procure the coverage from admitted insurers was made. The surplus lines licensee then files a declaration of "lack of knowledge of how the coverage could have been procured from admitted insurers." Neither substitutes for the other. Risks on the Department's Export List are excepted from the search.
Then the filing and the tax. Pennsylvania has a real stamping operation: the Pennsylvania Surplus Lines Association runs mandatory electronic filing under contract with the Department and charges a per-filing stamping fee - $20.00 where the filing arrives within 45 days of the placement's effective date and $45.00 if it is late, a spread designed to make punctuality cheaper than procrastination. Premium tax is 3% of gross premiums, reported on RCT-123 and due 31 January for the preceding year, with no statutory exemptions.
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 is real but unpublished - PID and PSI both describe the payment without naming an amount.
Adding Casualty later means another $45 exam fee plus PID's $25 additional-line-of-authority fee - not a second full licence, because Pennsylvania issues one producer licence carrying whatever lines you qualify for. Which is another reason the combined 16-06 exam at $55 beats two singles at $90 plus $25.
Surplus lines is a different order of magnitude: $200 for the licence, $200 to renew on time, $400 lapsed, plus the $45 exam and PASLA's per-filing stamping fee of $20 on time or $45 late.
Eligibility Requirements
Be 18 or older, commit no prohibited act, pass Series 16-04 or hold a waiving designation, 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 residence or English-literacy requirement.
Initial resident applicants are fingerprinted through IdentoGO under service code 1KGBGJ, but only after passing and applying. The Casualty guide walks that sequence through - and Pennsylvania destroys prints submitted out of order, so the order is not advisory.
Keeping Your License Active
Important CE details: Twenty-four credits every two years, tracked through Sircon.
Two-year licence expiring the last day of your birth month, and 24 credit hours per cycle.
Holding property authority changes what those 24 hours must contain. Act 142 of 2024 added two mandated topics: at least 3 credits of ethics for every producer, and at least 2 credits of flood insurance for a licensee with a property and casualty line of authority. Both sit inside the 24 rather than on top of it - so the flood hours displace two general-topic hours rather than lengthening your cycle.
The flood requirement is a sensible fit for a state whose dominant catastrophe exposure is riverine rather than coastal, and it is new enough that older CE planning will not account for it. Existing licensees had 12 months from 29 April 2025 or until the end of their current licence period, whichever was longer; anyone licensed since satisfies it by the end of their first period.
Carryover is generous: up to 24 excess credits may be carried into the next period. The Property & Casualty guide covers renewal, the late-renewal tiers and the point at which the path back closes.
Quick Reference
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