South Carolina P&C Insurance Exam 2026

What This License Is

This license carries both §38-43-75(A)(3) property — "coverage for the direct or consequential loss or damage to property of every kind" — and §38-43-75(A)(4) casualty — "coverage against legal liability, including that for death, injury, or disability or damage to real or personal property." Together they write the whole of a homeowners, commercial package, auto or workers' compensation contract.

The exam's full name, Property, Casualty, Surety and Marine, is a useful reminder that South Carolina's P&C authority is broad: it reaches surety and marine exposures as well as the standard property and liability lines. Producers whose books are strictly households can consider the narrower Personal Lines license instead; producers heading toward the excess market will need a separate surplus lines broker license on top of this one, which the Property guide covers.

Because South Carolina charges a flat $59 for every producer exam, the combined route dominates the single-line routes on price: two separate exams cost $118 and two test days for the same authority this one buys in one.

Exam Options & Format

InsSC-PCSM04 is 140 total items in 165 minutes for $59 — the longest sitting South Carolina gives a producer. The content outline splits it into 130 scored questions — 100 general and 30 South Carolina — plus 10 unscored pretest items.

Compare that to the single-line exams and a pattern appears. InsSC-Prop04 and InsSC-Cas06 are each 80 items with 75 scored and only 5 pretest, and their South Carolina sections carry no unscored items at all. On the combined exam, pretest items return to the state section and the state block grows only from 25 to 30 — so you are covering both chapters of South Carolina property and casualty law in five more questions than a single-line candidate faces on one.

Passing means a scaled score of 70 on a 0-100 reporting scale, set by the South Carolina Department of Insurance. The handbook states scores "should not be interpreted as the percentage or number of correct answers." Results appear on screen immediately; the Personal Lines guide covers what the score report does and does not tell you.

One scheduling note: Pearson VUE publishes two sets of South Carolina content outlines, split at September 15, 2026. Item counts are unchanged across that boundary; topical content is not. Study from the set matching your test date.

Most Tested Topics on the South Carolina Property & Casualty Exam

Thirty scored questions cover South Carolina law, and three clusters recur: the property and casualty guaranty association's unusual limit structure, the way South Carolina names and organizes its regulator, and the calendar of deadlines a producer is personally responsible for. All verified against the Code:

The guaranty structure is where South Carolina's P&C answer diverges most from the generic one. Note that there are two deductibles, not one: a $250 floor on covered claims and a separate $100 floor on unearned premium refunds. Note that workers' compensation is the exception to everything — no $300,000 cap applies to it. And note the $10,000,000 aggregate per insured and its affiliates, a number national material rarely mentions at all.

The second cluster is pure South Carolina vocabulary. The state's regulator is a Director, appointed rather than elected — and §38-1-30 exists precisely because so much older statutory language says "Commissioner." A question that offers "Commissioner" and "Director" as alternatives is testing whether you know they are the same office by operation of statute.

The deadline calendar is the third, and it has a shape worth memorizing: fifteen days for appointments, thirty days for everything else you owe the Department. Terminations, address and name changes, administrative actions and criminal convictions are all thirty. Only the insurer's notice of appointment runs on fifteen — and it runs from the earlier of contract execution or first application, so writing business before the paperwork is filed starts the clock without telling you.

Bringing a License Into South Carolina — Waivers, Nonresident Licensing and CE Reciprocity

If you already hold the same lines elsewhere, you may not need to test at all. §38-43-101 is short and worth reading in full: "An individual who applies for an insurance producer license in this State who was previously licensed for the same lines of insurance in another state is not required to complete an examination. This exemption only is available if the person is currently licensed in another state or if the application is received within ninety days of the cancellation of the applicant's previous license."

Three constraints hide in that sentence. The waiver is line-for-line — a Georgia property and casualty license waives South Carolina's P&C exam, not its life exam. The ninety-day clock runs from cancellation of the prior license, not from your move, your job offer or your last day at work. And once the license is more than ninety days cancelled and not currently active anywhere, the waiver is simply gone and InsSC-PCSM04 is back on the table.

There is no designation-based exam waiver in South Carolina. This is worth saying explicitly because several states do offer one and study material travels. CLU, ChFC, CPCU, CIC, FLMI, RHU and the rest appear in South Carolina's producer statute in exactly one place — §38-43-106, as sources of continuing education credit. Nothing in Chapter 43 waives an examination for holding a designation, and the candidate handbook lists no such waiver. A CPCU moving from another state uses §38-43-101 like everyone else.

Nonresident licensing runs on reciprocity. §38-43-70 provides that "a nonresident person shall receive a nonresident producer license with the same lines of authority held in the home state" where the conditions are met, and keys the whole thing to whether "the person's home state awards nonresident producer licenses to residents of this State on the same basis." The nonresident application fee is the same $25 a resident pays, and it is filed through NIPR.

Nonresidents are not fingerprinted. South Carolina prints resident producers on new applications only. SCDOI is blunt about it: prints obtained for any other application type are destroyed. If you are licensing into South Carolina from out of state as a nonresident, the fingerprint step in the Casualty guide does not apply to you.

CE reciprocity works the same way. §38-43-75(C) provides that a nonresident producer's satisfaction of his home state's continuing education requirements "shall constitute satisfaction of this state's continuing education requirements if the nonresident producer's home state recognizes" the same in return, and SCDOI restates it: "Non-resident agents may comply by meeting the requirements of their home state." Satisfy your home state and you are done — but only while the reciprocity runs both ways.

If you are moving here rather than licensing in from a distance, remember the handbook's provision that a new resident "may pretest and take South Carolina licensing exams in any Pearson VUE test center nationwide before moving." Between that and §38-43-101, most producers relocating to South Carolina never sit an exam here at all.

Military. §38-43-110(C) allows a producer unable to comply "due to active military service or some other extenuating circumstance (e.g., a long-term medical disability)" to request a waiver of renewal procedures — including examination requirements or fines. South Carolina's military-spouse licensure provisions sit in Title 40, Chapter 1, which governs Labor, Licensing and Regulation boards; the Department of Insurance is not one, and no military-spouse provision appears in Chapter 43. If you are a military spouse relocating to South Carolina, ask the Department directly rather than assuming Title 40 reaches producer licenses.

Renewing a South Carolina License — the Calendar, the Money and the Six-Month Cliff

Your renewal date is not a date the Department picks. §38-43-110 provides that a producer's license "continues on a biennial basis unless revoked or suspended," renewing by the last day of the licensee's month of birth — and §38-43-106 adds the parity rule: producers born in odd-numbered years comply in odd years, producers born in even-numbered years comply in even years. A producer born in March 1991 renews at the end of March in 2027, 2029 and so on. There is no fixed annual deadline to circle, which is exactly why people miss it.

What renewal costs and when the window opens. The renewal fee is $25 (§38-43-80), filed through NIPR. NIPR's South Carolina page states the renewal window starts 90 days prior to the expiration date and ends the last day of the birth month. You cannot renew until your CE is on file, so the practical deadline for finishing coursework is earlier than the practical deadline for paying.

What has to be on file. 24 hours of approved CE including 3 hours of ethics — the ethics component coming from DOI Bulletin 2007-06 and Regulation 69-50 rather than from §38-43-106, which sets the 24 hours and says nothing about ethics. Hold both P&C and life, accident and health and at least one-third of the hours must relate to each side. Up to 18 excess hours carry into the next period, and an approved course may not be repeated for credit within two years of the date you first completed it. Continuing education is administered for the Department through State Based Systems (SBS), which replaced Prometric as CE administrator effective July 1, 2019 — the $15 licensee recordkeeping fee went away with it. Note the vendor split: Pearson VUE gives the exams, SBS holds CE transcripts and the license record, NIPR takes the money. SCDOI's older continuing-education page still names Prometric; the SBS transition supersedes it.

Miss the deadline and the license expires the next day. SCDOI: "The failure of any resident licensee to meet the biennial continuing education requirement will result in the producer license being placed in an expired status on the day following the licensee's compliance deadline." And the consequence is immediate — "If your license expires, you cannot conduct any business of insurance." Not a grace period. Not a soft landing.

Then you have six months. Resident producers may reinstate the same license within six months by completing all requirements, including the missing credit hours, and paying the Department's $50 late CE compliance fee. The six-month window is statutory — §38-43-110(B) and §38-43-100(G)(2) refer only to "a penalty fee set forth by regulation" — while the $50 amount comes from SCDOI. During those six months you are unlicensed, not merely late.

A note on the late-fee tables you will find online. NIPR publishes escalating totals for South Carolina — $125 for 1-30 days past expiration, $175 for 31-60 days, and $325 for 61-180 days — broken out as a renewal portion of $75 / $125 / $275 plus the $50 late CE fee. Read the condition attached to them: those totals apply where CE was not completed by the expiration date. A producer whose CE was finished on time but who simply renewed late pays the escalating renewal portion without the $50. And none of these tiers appear in §38-43-80, which sets the renewal fee at $25 and no more. Verify your own number at checkout rather than budgeting from a table.

After six months there is no reinstatement — only relicensure. SCDOI is explicit that at that point "the license and all appointments will cancel" and the producer must retake and pass the state licensing exam, obtain fingerprints, submit a new application and license fee to become re-licensed. That is the whole process again: $59, a new IdentoGO appointment, a new $25, and the loss of every appointment you held. The six-month cliff is the single most expensive deadline in South Carolina producer licensing.

Three ways out of the requirement. Long service: a licensee with 25 or more years of South Carolina licensure who is 65 or older is exempt from CE entirely (§38-43-106, added by 2022 Act No. 167) — both conditions, and an application is required. Limited lines producers are exempt from CE. Extenuating circumstances: §38-43-110(C) lets a producer in active military service or facing a long-term medical disability request a waiver of the renewal procedures, including fines.

What It Costs

$59 to Pearson VUE for InsSC-PCSM04 and $25 to the Department through NIPR — about $84 in published fees for both lines on a first-attempt pass. Renewal is another $25 every two years, plus whatever your CE provider charges for 24 hours.

Unpublished, but real: IdentoGO's fingerprint fee, paid at the appointment SCDOI schedules after you apply, and NIPR's transaction fee, shown at checkout. §38-43-100(F) puts the records-check cost on the applicant without naming an amount, and no primary source states one. Regulation 69-50 still contemplates "a reasonable annual recordkeeping fee" payable to the Continuing Education Administrator, but the $15 licensee fee charged under the old Prometric arrangement ended with the July 1, 2019 move to SBS.

If you add a surplus lines broker license, budget separately: §38-45-20 sets a $200 biennial license fee and requires a $10,000 bond, on top of a separate broker exam. Insurer appointments are the insurer's cost, not yours: $40 for a local appointment, $100 for special or general (§38-43-80).

Eligibility Requirements

§38-43-100(F) requires the Director to find that you are at least eighteen; are of good moral character with no felony or §38-43-130 disqualifying act within the last ten years and no misdemeanor involving dishonesty, breach of trust or another financial- or insurance-related crime within five; have paid the §38-43-80 fees; and have passed the examination for each line requested.

The statute imposes no residency or business-presence test. It does impose address discipline — §38-43-107 requires business, email, mailing and residential street addresses and notice of any change of legal name or address within thirty days.

New resident applicants are fingerprinted through SLED and the FBI; nonresidents are not. The Casualty guide covers the fingerprint sequence, and the reciprocity section above covers what happens when you arrive already licensed.

Continuing Education at a Glance

24 hours every two years, 3 of them ethics, due by the last day of your birth month in the years matching your birth year's parity. Hold life, accident and health authority alongside property and casualty and at least one-third of the 24 hours must relate to each — 8 and 8, plus the 3 ethics hours (§38-43-106).

No self-study cap. Regulation 69-50 defines a self-study hour as fifty minutes of study from an approved course followed by a competency examination, and permits textbook, video, intranet, internet, CD-ROM and other electronic delivery — without limiting how much of the 24 may be taken that way. Courses and providers must be Department-approved, and "courses taken from an unapproved sponsor or instructor will be declined."

If you write federal flood policies, the three-hour NFIP course applies as a condition of selling NFIP business under Section 207 of the federal Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2004 — SCDOI's Bulletin 2007-04 explains that the Department's role is to approve the course for three hours of South Carolina CE credit, not to mandate it. Renewal mechanics, reinstatement and the exemptions are in the Renewal section above.

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