Rhode Island P&C Insurance Exam 2026

Property and Casualty Authority in Rhode Island

Rhode Island has no combined Property & Casualty licence. Property is a line of authority at R.I. Gen. Laws section 27-2.4-9(a)(3) and Casualty is a separate one at (a)(4), each with its own examination - code 03 and code 04. What people call a P&C licence here is one licence carrying two lines.

The handbook does not leave the route to you. Its note beneath the Available Examinations table states that "first time candidates for (P&C) MUST register for both the Property Producer and Casualty Producer exam," the same table's asterisk footnote reads "* Candidates can register for two exams in one session (i.e. Property & Casualty)," and the price sits in the fee column heading itself: "Test Center Exam Fees* (If scheduled back to back, buy one get one free)." So the state's own instruction and its own pricing point in the same direction: book both papers into one session and pay $80.

One hundred and fifty-eight scored questions across the route - seventy-six on Property and eighty-two on Casualty - with fifty-eight of them Rhode Island-specific. That is a heavy state loading - second only to the Life and Accident and Health route's sixty - and it is split unevenly, thirty-two on Casualty against twenty-six on Property. The Property guide owns the property half of that material and the Casualty guide owns the auto, workers' compensation and surplus lines half. This guide carries what belongs to neither: the property and casualty guaranty association, the regulator, and the mechanics of keeping the licence.

And it owns the two questions that arrive after the exam is behind you. How a licensed producer from another state gets Rhode Island authority, and what actually happens on the calendar between one renewal and the next - including a thirty-day grace period Rhode Island runs that most states do not, and an expiry basis that is genuinely not what the internet says it is.

The Rhode Island Property and Casualty Route

Code 03 and code 04, two hours each, $80 for the pair when scheduled back to back. Property is built from a General Knowledge outline of "50 scoreable questions plus 5 pretest questions" and a Rhode Island Specific outline of "26 scoreable questions plus 6 pretest questions" - 76 scored, 87 items. Casualty is 50 plus 5 and "32 scoreable questions plus 6 pretest questions" - 82 scored, 93 items. Across the route that is 158 scored, 180 items and about four hours of testing.

Casualty carries the largest Rhode Island section of the five producer papers, at thirty-two scored questions, and Property one of the smallest at twenty-six. That asymmetry is worth planning study time around: the two papers are not equally Rhode Island-heavy, and the Casualty state outline reaches two bodies of law - motor vehicle insurance and workers' compensation - that a national syllabus barely touches.

The counts are sums of printed outline sections, not published totals. Neither Pearson VUE document adds them up: the February 2026 handbook carries codes, time allotments, fees and the Rhode Island content outlines themselves, counts and all, while the separate outlines publication #124001, stamped 05/2026 and effective 28 May 2026, carries the same counts and no time limits. Every pace on this site is computed on all items, scored and pretest together, so that lines can be compared on the same basis.

Passing is a scaled 70 on each paper independently, and the papers are separately scored - failing one does not cost you the other. "The scaled score that is reported to you is neither the number of questions you answered correctly nor the percentage of questions you answered correctly." The Personal Lines guide owns results and retakes; the Property guide owns test centres and booking; the Life and Health guide owns exam day.

Most Tested Topics Across the Rhode Island Property and Casualty Route

Fifty-eight scored questions across the two papers are Rhode Island-specific. The rows below are the material that spans both lines - what happens when a property and casualty insurer fails, who regulates the business here and with what powers, and the licence arithmetic every Rhode Island producer carries.

The guaranty caps are the single most valuable thing on this page, because they changed on 1 January 2026 and because they have four different units. A million dollars is per occurrence and reaches only first-party property loss under a commercial or residential property policy. Five hundred thousand is per claimant and covers everything else. Ten thousand is per policy and covers unearned premium. Five hundred thousand is again the cybersecurity figure but the unit changes to per single insured event, regardless of the number of claims or claimants. And workers' compensation sits outside all of it, paid in full. There is no single Rhode Island property and casualty cap and any answer that supplies one is wrong.

Then note which of them the insolvency date actually selects, because it is one subparagraph rather than all four. Subparagraph (C) runs a three-limb ladder keyed to the date the insurer became insolvent - not the date of the loss, not the date the claim was made, not the policy period: $1,000,000 for insolvencies after 1 January 2026, $500,000 per claimant for insolvencies on or after 1 January 2008, $300,000 per claimant for insolvencies before that. A 2007 policy with a 2026 insolvency gets the 2026 treatment. The other three limbs carry no date qualifier: workers' compensation is paid in full whenever the insolvency fell, unearned premium is $10,000 per policy, and the cybersecurity ceiling is $500,000 per insured event.

The single-act question is the other high-value distinction, and Rhode Island answers it in two opposite ways in two chapters. The trade practices chapter is flatly definitional - section 27-29-4 lists sixteen practices and attaches no frequency requirement at all, so one act is enough. The claims chapter is narrower and hides its test: section 27-9.1-4 lists the prohibited practices and opens "Any of the following acts by an insurer, if committed in violation of section 27-9.1-3" - importing the flagrancy-or-frequency test by cross-reference rather than restating it. Reading section 27-9.1-4 alone makes the claims act look like a single-act statute. It is not, and that cross-reference is the trap.

Reciprocity: Bringing an Out-of-State License to Rhode Island

Rhode Island runs three different paths for a producer licensed somewhere else, and which one you are on depends on a fact about your current licences rather than on your intentions. Do you want a Rhode Island non-resident licence, do you already hold one and are moving here, or do you hold none and are moving here? The answers are genuinely different.

Path one: a non-resident licence, staying where you are. Non-resident producers do not sit the Rhode Island examinations. NIPR's Rhode Island non-resident page lists the producer lines with no exam-required split at all, and the governing condition is simply that "Applicants must have an active producer license in their own resident state." The fee is $130, against $120 for a resident, on the same two-year term. Reinstatement is $180.

Two rules on that page differ from the resident page and are routinely cross-attributed, so keep them apart. The errors and omissions mandate at section 27-2.4-23 binds resident producer licensees and is not imposed on non-residents by any page we read. And a non-resident surplus lines applicant must "hold or apply for Property and Casualty in Rhode Island" - a requirement that has no resident-page equivalent stated in those terms.

Path two: you already hold a Rhode Island non-resident licence, and then you move here. Do not file a new application. DBR's FAQ: "You are not permitted to hold two active resident licenses at the same time. We will convert a non-resident license to a resident license with an emailed request including your new Rhode Island resident address." And the detail that makes this the easiest path in the state: "The expiration date on your Rhode Island license will not change." Your renewal cycle and your continuing-education clock carry straight over.

Path three: you hold no Rhode Island licence and you move here. This is the one with a deadline, and it has a floor as well as a ceiling. First request cancellation of your former resident-state licence. Then, in DBR's words: "At least 24 hours after that license is cancelled (but not more than 90 days), go to NIPR.com and apply for your Rhode Island resident license. Our electronic business rules will pick up on a cancelled resident license for 90 days after it is cancelled and you will be allowed to move forward and complete a new resident license application without having to take the Rhode Island licensing exam."

Apply too early and the system has not caught up; apply too late and you sit the papers. Twenty-four hours is the floor and ninety days is the ceiling, and both are measured from the cancellation of the old licence rather than from your move. The statutory backing is section 27-2.4-11(a), which excuses pre-licensing education and examination for an applicant previously licensed for the same lines in another state - conditioned on current licensure there or an application received within ninety days of cancellation, plus certification of good standing from the prior state or the NAIC Producer Database.

A second, separate ninety-day clock lives in section 27-2.4-11(b), and it measures a different event: a licensed producer moving to Rhode Island must apply "within 90 days of establishing legal residence," with no pre-licensing or examination required for any line previously held, "except where the insurance commissioner determines otherwise by regulation." One clock runs from cancelling the old licence, the other from establishing residence here. They are not the same date and they are not interchangeable.

Neither route waives the Rhode Island law itself. Section 27-2.4-11(a) requires the applicant to "certify knowledge of Rhode Island law applicable to insurance producers." The Life and Health guide owns the waivers module and works through what that certification means.

Continuing education on arrival is credited, not deferred. DBR: "Licensees who have relocated to Rhode Island after being licensed in another state shall provide, on the first renewal of the license, twenty-four (24) credits consisting of courses approved either in the licensees' prior resident state or in Rhode Island" - with the Department's own gloss that this "is not to give more time to complete 24 credits, but to provide credit that was given during the same license cycle." Prior-state courses count toward the twenty-four; the deadline does not move. Separately, section 2.5 of the CE rule exempts non-residents who meet their home state's requirement where that state is reciprocal.

One non-reciprocity list exists in Rhode Island and it is not a producer list. DBR publishes that "The states of California, Hawaii, and New York are NOT reciprocal states for adjuster licensing." That is an adjuster rule. No equivalent list is published for producers, and carrying it across would be carrying a rule from a different licence class.

Renewing a Rhode Island Producer License

The term is two years and the basis is a flat cycle, not your birthday. 230-RICR-20-50-5 states it plainly: "The Department issues two-year licenses. The fees listed below apply to a person obtaining the license during the two-year period even if his or her license will expire in less than two years." That second sentence is the practical warning - a licence issued late in a cycle costs the full $120 and still expires when the cycle does.

Nothing in Rhode Island ties a PRODUCER licence's expiry to a birth month. We looked in the fee rule, the continuing-education rule, section 27-2.4-9, NIPR's Rhode Island resident and non-resident licensing pages, both NIPR renewal pages, NIPR's Rhode Island state-information overview, DBR's licensing FAQ, DBR's renewal instructions and DBR's Insurance Professionals page. None of them ties producer expiry to a birth month, a birthday or an odd-or-even-year rule. There is one Rhode Island birth-month rule and it belongs to a different licence class: NIPR's Rhode Island non-resident ADJUSTER page says "The renewal date is the birth month of the licensee." Do not carry it across to a producer licence. The usable rule is NIPR's: "License is eligible for renewal starting 90 days prior to expiration date on PDB." Look up your own expiration date rather than deriving it.

The statute frames the licence as continuing rather than as expiring. Section 27-2.4-9(b) says the licence "shall remain in effect unless revoked or suspended as long as" the section 27-2.4-4 fee is paid and the education requirements are met "by the license renewal due date." So the two-year term comes from the rule and the conditions come from the statute, and the two documents are complementary rather than in conflict - section 27-2.4-4 prices a year at $55, the rule sets the term at two, and $55 twice plus a $5 tracking fee twice is the $120 you pay.

Continuing education is a gate, checked before the transaction will go through. DBR's renewal instructions: "Unless exempt, all required continuing education credits must be completed and appear on your transcript in order to be eligible to renew." And NIPR adds the lag: "It generally takes up to 72 hours from the compliance date for the status to be updated in our system." Since providers have ten days from course completion to file the roster, the real deadline for finishing a course is roughly a fortnight before the renewal date.

Renewals are all-or-nothing on lines. NIPR's Rhode Island resident renewal page lists "Submit a partial renewal. All Lines of Authority must be renewed" among the things an applicant cannot do; its non-resident renewal page states the same rule as "Partial renewals are not allowed. Electronic renewals must be renewed for all active lines held." A producer who no longer writes one of their lines cannot simply let it drop at renewal by renewing the others.

Then the three stages after expiry, and the first is unusually generous.

That thirty-day fee-free grace period is worth knowing about before you need it, because it is published on both NIPR renewal pages and easy to miss on DBR's own. It sits before the reinstatement window rather than inside it: miss your expiry by three weeks and you pay the ordinary $120.

The statutory reinstatement rule is section 27-2.4-9(c), and it is worth reading beside the operational one because it is phrased differently. A lapsed individual licence may be reinstated within twelve months of the renewal due date without re-examination, on payment of a penalty of double the unpaid renewal fee. DBR's reinstatement instructions state the operational figures - "$120.00 renewal fee and $50.00 late fee for a total of $170.00 payable online by credit card" - and set the window as "thirty days (30) after the expiration date of the license up to three hundred sixty-five days (365) after the expiration date."

What happens after day 365 is not published, and this guide does not guess. DBR's reinstatement instructions were read to the end and cover the thirty-to-three-hundred-and-sixty-five day window, the fees, the continuing-education prerequisite and the background documentation - and stop. They do not address the post-365-day case and do not state whether a new examination is required. Section 27-2.4-9(c)'s twelve-month limit on reinstatement without re-examination points one way; nothing published completes the thought. Ask the Division rather than assuming.

Two more things reinstatement asks for that renewal does not. All continuing education must be complete before you apply, not alongside. And any background question you now answer affirmatively that was not previously reported needs a written explanation plus documentation - the Accident and Health guide owns background disclosure and covers what that means.

Two duties that run between renewals. Section 27-2.4-9(f) requires notice to the Commissioner of a change of legal name or address within 30 days. And section 27-2.4-9(d) offers a route out for a licensee who genuinely cannot comply: the Commissioner may waive the renewal procedures, and expressly any examination requirement, fine or sanction, for a licensee unable to comply because of military service or some other extenuating circumstance such as a long-term medical disability. It is available on request and discretionary rather than automatic.

And one thing renewal does not carry. The veteran fee waiver at R.I. Gen. Laws section 27-10-4 is real and DBR publishes it - and it "only applies to insurance claim adjusters who are residents of Rhode Island." Producers do not get it. If a source tells you otherwise, it has read an adjuster rule.

Rhode Island Property and Casualty Fees

$80 for both papers if scheduled back to back, $5 for the BCI background report, $120 to the state. Around $205 for two lines of authority, and $160 in exam fees alone if the papers are booked on separate days.

The Department's full producer fee schedule, in one place. Resident producer licence, initial and renewal: $120. Non-resident: $130. Reinstatement fee: $50, on top of the renewal fee. Returned check fee: $25. Notice of appointment, per producer per licensed company: $15, paid by the insurer, with $15 to renew and nothing to terminate. Surplus line broker licence, initial and biennial renewal: $100. There is no fee anywhere in the schedule for adding a line of authority.

Where the resident and non-resident figures come from. Both are built rather than set: $120 is "$55 per year fee of R.I. Gen. Laws section 27-2.4-4 and the $5 per year Continuing Education tracking fee," doubled; $130 is "$60 per year fee of R.I. Gen. Laws section 27-2.4-4, $5 per year retaliatory fee and a $5 per year Continuing Education tracking fee," doubled. The retaliatory element is why the ten-dollar gap exists.

The NIPR transaction fee is a real cost and is not published for Rhode Island. Neither NIPR Rhode Island page states an amount, and NIPR's general apply page says only that "Each state has unique requirements and fees for obtaining and renewing a license, including transaction and state license fees." Expect a small charge on top of the state fee and do not plan around a figure.

Costs outside the schedule. Errors and omissions insurance at $250,000 per claim and $500,000 aggregate, required by section 27-2.4-23 and bought from the market. And, if the surplus lines route is in the plan, the four percent premium tax under section 27-3-38(e) - payable to the tax administrator at producer licence renewal, which the Casualty guide covers.

Rhode Island Property and Casualty Eligibility

Four findings, at section 27-2.4-8(a): at least eighteen; no act committed that is a ground for denial, suspension or revocation under section 27-2.4-14; the fees paid; and the examinations passed for the lines applied for - which on this route means both of them, unless section 27-2.4-11 relieves you.

No pre-licensing education, and Rhode Island got there by repealing it. Chapter 27-3.3, "Mandatory Prelicensing Education Requirements for Property and Casualty Insurance Producers," is marked [Repealed] in the official Title 27 index, alongside its life and health twin at chapter 27-3.1. Section 27-2.4-7 imposes no course of study, DBR states "Rhode Island does not require pre-licensing education," and the February 2026 candidate handbook carries no education step in its three-part licensure process.

Note what section 27-2.4-11 still refers to. Both of its limbs mention "pre-licensing education" - as something a reciprocity applicant is excused from. A cross-reference that presupposes a concept is not proof the requirement is live, and here it is not: the chapters that imposed it are repealed and nothing replaced them. The bounded, accurate statement is that no prelicensing-hour requirement exists in the General Laws or in the 230-RICR-20-50 rules for the general producer lines.

Business entity licensure is elective, under section 27-2.4-8(b) - an entity "may elect to obtain" a licence, and the Commissioner makes two findings only: fees paid, and a designated licensed producer responsible for the entity's compliance with Rhode Island insurance law. NIPR calls that person the Designated Responsible Licensed Producer and requires them to hold an active Rhode Island resident or non-resident licence.

And appointment is a separate question from licensure. Section 27-2.4-14.1(a): a producer "shall not act as an agent of an insurer unless appointed by that insurer" - but "An insurance producer who is not acting as an agent of an insurer is not required to become appointed," which matters for brokers. Where an appointment is needed the filing duty is the insurer's: "the appointing insurer shall file ... a notice of appointment within fifteen (15) days from the date the first insurance application is submitted." The clock runs from the first application, and Rhode Island's electronic appointments run through January 31 annually.

Rhode Island Property and Casualty Continuing Education

Twenty-four credits per biennial licence period, three of them ethics, under 230-RICR-20-50-2 section 2.6(A) - "a minimum of twenty-four (24) accumulated credit hours including three (3) hours of ethics." One total for the licence, whatever lines it carries, so a producer with both Property and Casualty owes exactly what a single-line producer owes.

Carryover is twelve credits and one cycle, with a catch. Section 2.9(B): "Up to twelve (12) excess continuing education credits accumulated during a biennial license cycle may be carried forward through the end of the next renewal period. Ethics credits will be carried forward as general credits so that the required three (3) ethics credit must be obtained during the biennial license cycle." Ethics cannot be banked, and half your carryover allowance evaporates as ethics if that is where the surplus sat.

Five exemptions, at section 2.5, and it is worth knowing which one you might reach: holders of licences for insurance types requiring no examination; residents whose licences are limited to credit, crop, travel, surety, car rental or title insurance; non-residents who meet their home state's requirement where that state is reciprocal; residents licensed continuously for twenty-five or more years who are at least fifty-five at renewal; and any exemption the Department grants. The long-service exemption needs both halves - twenty-five years of continuous licensure and age fifty-five at renewal, not either.

Non-compliance is not only a blocked renewal. Section 2.10(A) exposes a violator to "any or all of the penalties in R.I. Gen. Laws section 42-14-16" - an administrative penalty of not less than $100 and not more than $50,000, revocation or suspension, a cease order, or any combination - with the right to dispute it under the Administrative Procedures Act at chapter 42-35. Providers who fail to comply face removal from the approved provider list, which is why a course from an unapproved source is a risk to you as well as to them.

And the filing is not yours to make. Providers submit rosters electronically "within ten (10) days of completion of the course" under section 2.8(A)(5). Your job is to check the education transcript through the NAIC's State Based Systems licence manager and to leave enough runway for two clocks you do not control.

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