South Dakota Casualty Insurance Exam 2026

The South Dakota Casualty Producer License

Casualty is its own line of authority under SDCL 58-30-152(4) and its own examination, InsSD_Cas44. It is also reachable through the combined InsSD_PropCas46 paper with Property, at $95 rather than $170 for two singles.

The line covers liability rather than the thing insured - which is the distinction SDCL 58-9-5 draws when it defines property insurance to exclude "noncontractual legal liability." In practice a South Dakota Casualty producer is working with automobile liability, general and commercial liability, and workers' compensation, and each of those three is governed from a different place in the code: auto liability limits sit in Title 32, the coverage mandates sit in Title 58 chapter 58-11, and workers' compensation sits in Title 62 entirely.

Getting the licence is the usual short South Dakota route - no pre-licensing education, no fingerprinting or background-check fee, no errors-and-omissions mandate. Pass, wait forty-eight hours, apply within 180 days for $25.

This guide owns South Dakota's `surplus-lines` module, which is the natural extension of a casualty practice here: with no FAIR plan and no residual property market, hard-to-place risk goes to the non-admitted market, and South Dakota's chapter 58-32 has its own vocabulary, its own standard and its own thirty-day paperwork clock. That module sits below the most-tested section.

The South Dakota Casualty Exam: Format, Fee and Delivery

The handbook's fee table gives Casualty as 90 questions in 120 minutes for $85, code InsSD_Cas44, with a matching online row OPSD_Cas44 at the same time, count and price. Casualty is one of the seven South Dakota exams Pearson carries under OnVUE.

The content outlines split it as fifty scored plus five pretest of general knowledge and twenty-five scoreable plus five pretest of South Dakota material - eighty-five in total against the fee table's ninety. That is one of six such disagreements between Pearson's two South Dakota documents; the handbook carries the newer stamp.

Passing is a reported score of 70 rather than 70 percent correct, and only a failing report carries a number. Fail and you may rebook after twenty-four hours at the full $85; there is no cap on attempts published anywhere in the handbook.

The pacing arithmetic is worth doing before you choose between the standalone and the combination. Ninety questions in 120 minutes is about eighty seconds an item. The combination paper's published figure is 145 questions in 150 minutes - about sixty-two seconds. That is a meaningful difference on a paper where several of the state questions turn on reading a proviso to its end.

Most Tested Topics on the South Dakota Casualty Exam

Twenty-five scored questions are South Dakota-specific, and two clusters carry most of them: the motor vehicle coverage mandates, where South Dakota is stricter than the national baseline in a way that is easy to under-state, and workers' compensation, where it is looser in a way that is easy to over-state.

Start with UM and UIM, because the single most common error is treating them as one provision. They are two sections, in different places in chapter 58-11, and both are flatly mandatory. SDCL 58-11-9 is prohibitory - no policy "may be delivered or issued for delivery in this state" without uninsured motorist and hit-and-run coverage. SDCL 58-11-9.4 is separately prohibitory for underinsured motorist coverage. Neither section contains a rejection or waiver mechanism, so "mandatory unless rejected in writing" - the answer in a great many states - is simply wrong here. The limits run to $100,000 per person and $300,000 per accident unless the insured requests more. The two exception lists are identical, not different. Both sections open with the same carve-out - coverage is required "with respect to any motor vehicle registered or principally garaged in this state, except for snowmobiles" - and both except government-owned vehicles. A study guide that puts snowmobiles on one side and not the other has invented a distinction that is not in either statute.

Watch the UIM catchline, because it contradicts the section. SDCL 58-11-9.4 is headed "Underinsured motorist coverage to be available with liability policies," which reads permissively. The operative text is prohibitory. In South Dakota the catchlines are editorial headings, and the text controls. A question that quotes the heading is testing whether you know the difference.

Then workers' compensation, where the honest answer is more interesting than the usual one. SDCL 62-5-1 says an employer within the compensation provisions "shall secure the payment of compensation" - but the enforcement is indirect. Under SDCL 62-5-7, an employer who fails to comply "shall be deemed to have elected not to operate under the provisions of this title," which forfeits the exclusive-remedy protection of 62-3-2 and exposes the employer to a common-law action. The compulsion is the loss of immunity, not a fine. And there is no South Dakota state fund: 62-5-2 lists three private routes - stock corporations writing workers' compensation, mutual employer's liability associations, and reciprocal or interinsurance exchanges - with self-insurance as a fourth at 62-5-5. Political subdivisions are exempt from the security provisions under 62-5-6.

And the negligence rule that shapes every South Dakota liability claim is its own thing. SDCL 20-9-2: contributory negligence "does not bar a recovery when the contributory negligence of the plaintiff was slight in comparison with the negligence of the defendant, but in such case, the damages shall be reduced in proportion to the amount of plaintiff's contributory negligence." There is no fifty-percent bar and no percentage of any kind - the comparison is qualitative. Auto cancellation and nonrenewal, which sit next door in chapter 58-11, belong to the Personal Lines guide.

Writing Surplus Line Business in South Dakota

South Dakota has no FAIR plan, no joint underwriting association and no property residual market anywhere in Title 58's seventy-nine chapters. The only residual mechanism in the insurance code is an automobile assigned risk plan at SDCL 58-11-57. Everything else that the admitted market will not write goes to the non-admitted market - which makes chapter 58-32 a working tool for a casualty producer rather than an exam curiosity.

Learn South Dakota's vocabulary first, because almost every word differs from the national one. The state says "surplus line" - singular, no "s" on line. It licenses a "surplus line broker," not a surplus lines producer. The counterparty is an "unauthorized insurer," not a nonadmitted or eligible surplus lines insurer. And the statutory verb is "export" - SDCL 58-32-3 is titled "Export defined." A question that uses the national vocabulary is often testing whether you noticed.

The licence is separate, it costs $50, and it carries the only mandatory bond in South Dakota producer licensing. SDCL 58-32-8 sets the application and fee; SDCL 58-32-10.1 requires a resident surplus line broker to file a bond "with an authorized corporate surety approved by the director" in the penal sum of $2,000, within thirty days of the licence issuing and before procuring any coverage. It stays in force while the licence does, and terminating it takes thirty days' written notice to both the broker and the director. Note the scope: the section reaches resident brokers, not non-residents. This matters as a contrast: there is no general errors-and-omissions or bond requirement for producers in chapter 58-30 at all, and the only E&O provision there, 58-30-126, reaches managing general agents at the director's discretion. NIPR adds that a non-resident surplus line broker applicant must already hold an active surplus lines licence in the resident state.

The standard is "diligent effort" - and South Dakota states no minimum number of declinations. SDCL 58-32-17 permits export only "after diligent effort has been made to do so, from insurers authorized to transact and actually writing that kind and class of insurance in this state." There is no "three declinations" rule in the chapter's fifty-eight sections, and - unusually - there is no surplus lines chapter in the administrative rules at all, so no rule fills the gap either. The whole requirement, its documentation and its timing sit in the statute.

Then the surrounding sections that narrow it. 58-32-16 addresses impossibility of procuring coverage from authorised insurers. 58-32-18 prohibits export where the coverage IS available from an authorised insurer - with an exception, so read it whole rather than as a flat bar. 58-32-19 requires the placement to run through a licensed surplus line broker, and 58-32-21 makes placing surplus lines business in an authorised insurer a misdemeanour.

South Dakota runs a disapproval model rather than an eligible-insurer list, and it puts the burden on you. SDCL 58-32-23 is titled "Financial condition of surplus line insurer - Director not required to determine." 58-32-25 makes ascertaining that financial condition the broker's job and a violation a misdemeanour. And 58-32-24 lets the director order an insurer ineligible on financial grounds. There is no affirmative list to check against; there is a duty to look and an order that can take a market away.

The paperwork clock is thirty days. SDCL 58-32-20 requires the broker to file an affidavit, on a form the director prescribes, within thirty days after the insurance was procured, setting out "facts from which it can be determined whether such insurance was eligible for export." 58-32-42.1 allows a uniform report to be prescribed in lieu of the annual statement or the export affidavit. Records under 58-32-39 must cover the daily report, each certificate issued, amounts, gross and return premiums, rates, effective dates and terms, insurer names and proportions of risk, the insured's name and address and the risk's description and location - and no retention period is stated anywhere in the chapter.

The tax is the broker's, and the section does not print a rate. SDCL 58-32-44 imposes it on "each broker," paid to the state treasurer through the director, remitted before the first day of April each year, or quarterly where the prior year's collections exceeded $5,000. For the rate it points elsewhere: the tax is set "at the rate and in the manner provided by s 10-44-2," a graduated section in the taxation title. Confirm the applicable limb with the Division rather than assuming a single percentage.

And do not merge the broker tax with independently procured coverage, because the taxpayer changes. SDCL 58-32-47 to 58-32-55 run a separate regime in which the tax is paid to the director and, under 58-32-52, the INSURED is liable rather than a broker. 58-32-55 makes that regime inapplicable to life, health and annuities. Chapter scope generally: 58-32-4 provides that the surplus line chapter does not apply to life and health insurance, annuities and reinsurance, with exceptions - so a life producer reading this section is mostly reading about somebody else's licence.

South Dakota Casualty License Fees

$85 to Pearson VUE, $25 to the state, plus the portal's service fee. South Dakota charges nothing for pre-licensing, fingerprinting, a background report or errors-and-omissions cover, because none is required of a producer.

The exam fee is payable at reservation - "Fees will not be accepted at the test center" - and a retake is the full $85 again after a twenty-four-hour wait.

The licence fee is $25 resident and $30 non-resident, covering every line of authority in one filing. Renewal is $20 biennially, $40 late.

If surplus line is in your plan, budget separately. The surplus line broker licence is $50 at NIPR, resident or non-resident, with the same figure for reinstatement. A resident broker adds the $2,000 bond required by SDCL 58-32-10.1, filed within thirty days of licensure; the section does not reach non-resident brokers. Renewal of a surplus line broker licence is $100, or $200 late - five times the ordinary producer renewal, which is the sharpest fee step in South Dakota producer licensing.

The combination arithmetic: $95 for InsSD_PropCas46 against $170 for InsSD_Prop43 and InsSD_Cas44 taken separately. That $75 is the only volume discount the state publishes.

South Dakota Casualty License Eligibility

Eighteen years of age, a passing score, the fee paid, and no act that is a ground under SDCL 58-30-167. Those are the four findings SDCL 58-30-148 requires before a resident producer licence issues.

No bond and no errors-and-omissions requirement for the producer licence itself. The bond in the code attaches to the surplus line broker at 58-32-10.1, and the discretionary E&O provision at 58-30-126 reaches managing general agents only.

No adjuster licence exists to add. The Division states it flatly: "South Dakota does not license property/casualty adjusters." For a casualty producer this changes the shape of a claims practice - work that would require an adjuster licence in a neighbouring state is not separately licensed here, and there is no adjuster continuing-education track to maintain.

The disqualifiers are the thirteen numbered grounds at 58-30-167, and the money penalty behind them has exactly two ceilings: SDCL 58-4-28.1 caps it at "five thousand dollars for an insurance producer or twenty-five thousand dollars for an insurer, administrator, health maintenance organization, licensee, or registrant for each offense." It is in lieu of suspension rather than in addition to it, and none may be imposed before a hearing unless the licensee "agrees to the penalty in writing."

And one duty that attaches the moment you write business. SDCL 58-30-171 bars an insurer or producer from paying "a commission, service fee, brokerage, or other valuable consideration" to an unlicensed person who was required to be licensed, and 58-30-172 bars the unlicensed person from accepting it. 58-30-173 preserves renewal and deferred commissions where the licence was held at the time of the transaction - so a retiring producer's trail is safe, and a referral fee to an unlicensed friend is not.

South Dakota Casualty Continuing Education

Ten credit hours of certified property and casualty courses every two years, due the last day of your birth month under SDCL 58-30-116 and ARSD 20:06:18:03(1). Hold Life and Health as well and the total is twenty rather than thirty, capped by the statute's own proviso.

A surplus line broker licence held on top does not add a CE track. The four automatic CE exemptions the Division publishes are limited licences for credit life and credit health, travel accident and baggage, bail bonds, and surety bonds - and a producer's ten hours cover the producer authority the surplus line licence sits on.

Carry-over is prohibited by ARSD 20:06:18:18, and ARSD 20:06:18:20 blocks earning credit for the same course twice inside a two-year period, as a student or as an instructor. No ethics hours are required by the statute or the rule.

Reporting is the provider's duty - attendees go to SBS "within fourteen (14) days of the conclusion of the course." If you need more time for a real reason, ARSD 20:06:18:13 lets the director extend for good cause, on a written request that must arrive at least 21 days before the deadline.

Miss the deadline and the appointments go with the licence - "the license will lapse, and all appointments will be terminated" - with no grace period in which the licence still works. Reinstatement runs for one year - and the two portals label the money differently, NIPR pricing a $40 LATE RENEWAL against the $20 renewal and separately listing a $25 REINSTATEMENT fee for an insurance producer, conditional on having held a valid licence for at least a year beforehand. The Property and Casualty guide walks the renewal filing itself.

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