South Dakota P&C Insurance Exam 2026

The South Dakota Property and Casualty Producer License

South Dakota publishes a combined Property and Casualty examination - InsSD_PropCas46 - and prices it at $95 against $170 for the two standalone papers. Holding both lines also covers personal-lines risks, so the combination is the widest property and casualty authority the state issues on a single paper.

Property and Casualty are two of the eight lines of authority at SDCL 58-30-152, and their statutory definitions divide neatly: SDCL 58-9-5 defines property insurance as covering property "other than noncontractual legal liability," which is the casualty half.

The route is South Dakota's short one - no pre-licensing education, no fingerprinting or background-check fee, no errors-and-omissions mandate. Pass, wait forty-eight hours for the result to reach SBS and NIPR, apply within 180 days for $25.

This guide owns two modules, and both of them govern the whole state rather than this line. `reciprocity` covers moving into South Dakota and licensing into it from outside - two routes with two different clocks, and a rule about home-state certification that saves a step. `renewal` covers the licence term, the birth-month deadline, the fee tiers and what happens when the deadline passes. Every South Dakota producer needs both; they are documented here.

The South Dakota Property and Casualty Exam: 145 Questions, or Possibly 90

The handbook's fee table gives the combination paper as 145 questions in 150 minutes for $95, code InsSD_PropCas46, with an online row OPSD_PropCas46 at identical figures. At 145 items that is about sixty-two seconds a question.

The content outlines describe a much shorter paper. The Property and Casualty general knowledge outline reads "Product Knowledge, Terms and Concepts (50 scored plus 5 pretest questions)" - the same number printed on the standalone Property outline - across six top-level sections: types of property policies; insurance terms and related concepts; policy provisions and contract law; types of casualty policies, bonds and related terms; insurance terms and related concepts again; and policy provisions. The South Dakota Specific outline reads "(30 scoreable questions plus 5 pretest questions)." Ninety in total.

Ninety against 145 is a fifty-five-question gap and it is not an artefact. The natural hypothesis - that the combined outline carries two general parentheticals, one for property and one for casualty, summing to 145 - was tested and refuted: the outline carries one. So Pearson's two South Dakota documents genuinely disagree here, more sharply than on any other paper, and neither is asserted over the other on this page. The practical guidance is the same as everywhere: the handbook carries the newer stamp, rev08/2026 against the outlines' 1 March 2024, and 145 is what a booking screen quotes. Prepare for 145 and treat 90 as the pleasant surprise it would be.

Passing is a reported score of 70 rather than 70 percent correct, one result for the whole paper. Fail it and you retake all of it for another $95 after a twenty-four-hour wait - where two singles could be failed and retaken separately at $85. That is the trade the $75 saving buys.

Most Tested Topics on the South Dakota Property and Casualty Exam

Thirty scored questions are South Dakota-specific on this paper. The guaranty association section carries the heaviest concentration of exam-ready numbers in the state's law - and two of its four figures sit in unnumbered flush paragraphs rather than in the enumerated subdivisions, which is exactly where a reader skimming for "(1), (2), (3)" stops looking.

Read the units, because South Dakota changes them between limbs. Workers' compensation is paid in "the full amount of" the claim - there is no ceiling on it at all. Unearned premium is capped per policy at $25,000. Everything else is capped per claim at $300,000 - and the statute says claim, not claimant, which matters where several claimants share one occurrence. Three limbs, three denominators.

Then the two figures that are not in the numbered list. After subdivision (3), an unnumbered paragraph limits unearned-premium payment to "only that amount of each unearned premium which is in excess of one hundred dollars" - a $100 deductible. A final unnumbered paragraph imposes an aggregate: once $10,000,000 has been paid "to or on behalf of any insured and its affiliates, on covered claims arising under the policy or policies of any one insolvent insurer," the association stops - and that count includes payments made by other states' associations and property and casualty security funds. Workers' compensation claims are expressly excepted from the aggregate, so the workers' compensation limb is both uncapped per claim and outside the ceiling.

And there is an overarching floor no candidate should skip: "In no event is the association obligated to a claimant in an amount in excess of the obligation of the insolvent insurer under the policy or coverage from which the claim arises." The statutory cap is a ceiling on a contractual obligation, never a top-up above it. Two exclusions ride alongside: a covered claim excludes one filed after the earlier of eighteen months from the liquidation order or the court's final filing date, and it excludes incurred-but-not-reported losses.

Then the class trap, which runs the opposite way from the life and health chapter. SDCL 58-29A-104: "It is unfair trade practice for any insurer or insurance producer" to use the association's existence as a sales inducement - a closed two-member class. The life and health equivalent at 58-29C-62 opens "No person, including a member insurer, agent, or affiliate" - an open class with an illustrative list. The two chapters were drafted differently and a study guide that harmonises them gets one of the two wrong by definition.

Finally, two regulator facts that pay across the whole paper. South Dakota is a file-and-use rate state on the statute's own words - SDCL 58-24-10: "The filing date is the effective date thereof unless the insurer proposes an effective date subsequent to the filing date" - with inland marine and motor vehicle carve-outs in the same section and a closer-supervision override at 58-24-10.2. And the money penalty has two ceilings, not three: $5,000 for a producer, $25,000 for an insurer or other licensee, per offense, in lieu of suspension rather than in addition to it.

South Dakota Reciprocity, Non-Resident Licensing and Moving In

The handbook states South Dakota's posture in a single sentence: "South Dakota is reciprocal in its licensing of nonresident Producers." In practice that means a producer licensed elsewhere does not sit a South Dakota examination and does not complete pre-licensing to write business here.

Licensing in from another state as a non-resident. You must be "licensed and in good standing in your home state as a resident producer." There is no South Dakota examination, no pre-licensing education, and the fee is $30 plus the portal's service fee, filed at NIPR or State Based Systems. NIPR adds a minimum age of eighteen on its non-resident page - a requirement it does not restate on the resident one.

One step you probably do not have to take. Home-state certification is not required where your home state subscribes to NIPR, because the Division verifies your standing directly through NIPR rather than asking you to produce a letter. That saves a request and a wait for most applicants.

Non-residents are exempt from South Dakota continuing education entirely. The Division's non-resident page: "Non-resident producers are exempt from CE requirements in South Dakota. You only need to comply with CE requirements in your home state." You do still renew - by the end of your birth month every two years - and the renewal fee is described as retaliatory, meaning it varies with what your home state charges South Dakota residents. No single number is published; the Division must be contacted for it.

Now moving in, which is a different question with two doors and two different clocks.

Door one - you already hold a South Dakota non-resident licence. Act within 30 days of the move: notify the Division of the address change and request a letter of clearance from your former home state, which the Division uses to verify the termination. The result, in the Division's own words, is that "your new resident producer license from South Dakota will be issued. You will not need to complete an application, submit a fee or take any insurance exams." No application, no fee, no examination - but only inside thirty days.

Door two - you are licensed elsewhere and hold no South Dakota licence. Apply within 90 days of the termination of your prior home-state resident licence and "you will not be required to take any South Dakota insurance exams" for the lines of authority you previously held. This route runs through a normal application and a normal fee; what it waives is the examination. The Division's page is the source for the waiver, and the statute behind it is narrower than the page. SDCL 58-30-52(9) covers a producer who moves here and applies within ninety days of establishing legal residence, and then adds a proviso: "An examination may be required of that person to obtain any line of authority previously held in the prior state unless the director determines otherwise by rule." So the waiver is the Division's practice operating inside a statutory discretion, not an absolute statutory right. 58-30-52(8) covers persons previously licensed for identical lines in another state on stated conditions.

Two related exemptions worth knowing. SDCL 58-30-52(1) exempts an applicant for the same kind of licence "as that which the applicant has previously held in this state for at least one year within the five years next preceding the date of application" - and only where the director deems them "fully qualified and competent." A year of prior holding plus a discretionary finding, not a bare five-year look-back. And SDCL 58-30-165 allows a temporary licence for up to 180 days without any examination, which is the bridge where a move and a business transition happen at once.

And what reciprocity does not reach. South Dakota publishes no designation-based waiver - no CLU, CPCU, ChFC, CFP, CIC, FLMI or LUTCF shortcut appears on the exemptions page, the study-materials page, the resident page or any of the FAQ's eighteen headings. Because South Dakota also requires no pre-licensing hours, there is no coursework requirement for a designation to exempt anyone from. Two other classes carry their own conditions: a non-resident managing general agent applicant must already hold an active South Dakota producer licence, and a non-resident surplus line broker applicant must hold an active surplus lines licence in the resident state.

Renewing a South Dakota Producer License

The licence has no term of its own - which is genuinely unusual, and it is where South Dakota trips people who look in the obvious place. SDCL 58-30-153 is headed "Term of insurance producer license" and then declines to supply one: "An insurance producer license shall remain in effect unless revoked, suspended, or expired as long as the fee set forth in s 58-2-29 is paid and the education requirements for resident individual insurance producers are met by the due date." Perpetual until lapse, conditioned on a fee and a due date. SDCL 58-30-74 is no more decisive, saying the licence is "subject to renewal by payment to the director annually or biennially" without picking one.

The clock lives in the continuing education statute instead. SDCL 58-30-116 opens with it: "Biennially, beginning April 1, 2012, on the last day of the licensee's birth month," the licensee must furnish evidence of completed CE. The Division says the same in its own words - "Resident producer licenses renew biennially based on the producer's birth month" - and the CE deadline is "the final day of the Producer's birth month."

There is no odd/even-year cycle keyed to your birth year. That claim appears in a lot of third-party material about South Dakota and it is supported by nothing: not SDCL 58-30-153, 58-30-74, 58-30-74.3 or 58-30-116; not ARSD 20:06:18:01 or :03; not any of the twenty-two rules in ARSD chapter 20:06:18; and not the Division's resident, non-resident, CE or CE-renewal pages. The birth-month hook is real. The birth-year parity is not.

The birth-month basis also does not reach every licence class, which catches agency owners. Business entity producer licences are subject to biennial renewal on or before July 1. Managing general agents and portable electronics licences renew July 1 annually. Bail bonds renews May 1 annually. Only the individual producer licence runs on your birthday.

When the window opens is the one place two primary sources disagree. The Division's resident-producer page says the renewal window opens 60 days before the deadline. NIPR's South Dakota renewal page says "Starts: 90 days prior to license expiration date." Both are primary - the Division is the regulator, NIPR is the system that actually opens the filing. Plan on sixty and be pleased if it is available at ninety.

The money is $20, and $40 if you are late. Renewal for a resident individual producer is $20 plus the vendor's transaction fee. Late renewal is $40 - exactly double, which is the same arithmetic the Division's FAQ describes when it says double fees apply to reinstatement within twelve months. Business entity renewal costs the state nothing, though the vendor may charge processing, and bail bonds renewal is $0. Renewals are filed electronically - the Division says "Renewals are completed electronically through NIPR," and SBS and Sircon carry them too.

Miss the deadline and two things happen at once. The Division: "If the required CE and renewal payment are not completed by the due date, the license will lapse, and all appointments will be terminated." The appointment consequence is the one producers forget - every carrier appointment goes with the licence, and each has to be re-filed by the insurer afterwards. And there is no grace period during which the licence still works: "No producer may transact the business of insurance in South Dakota while his or her license is in a state of lapse."

Reinstatement runs for one year and no further. NIPR's window is "Starts: Day after expiration date. Ends: One (1) year past expiration date," at the $40 figure - which NIPR labels a LATE RENEWAL fee, never a reinstatement fee. Its licensing page separately lists a $25 REINSTATEMENT fee for an insurance producer, and neither source says which transaction a lapsed licensee files. The Division's FAQ adds a condition NIPR does not: reinstatement within that year requires having held a valid licence for at least one year beforehand, and it requires completing all outstanding continuing education. What happens once the year closes is not published by either source - NIPR routes the question to the Division at (605) 773-3563 or sdinsurance@state.sd.us, and the practical inference that you become a new applicant is exactly that, an inference.

The CE that conditions all of this is ten hours, or twenty. Ten credit hours of certified property and casualty courses in the two-year period; ten for life and health; four for crop hail alone; and twenty in total for a producer holding both major groups, capped by the proviso in SDCL 58-30-116(1). Crop hail changes the arithmetic again: crop plus one other line is ten hours of which exactly two must be crop hail, and only two crop hail hours count toward the ten.

Four rules govern how you satisfy the hours, and all four are in ARSD chapter 20:06:18. Carry-over is prohibited outright at :18. No course counts twice inside one two-year period, whether attended or taught, at :20. A line of authority obtained mid-cycle waits until the next period at :03.01. And a good-cause extension - "disability, death, natural disaster, or other extenuating circumstances" - must be requested in writing and reach the director at least 21 days before the deadline, at :13, with the Division capping the extension at one year. No ethics hours are required by the statute or the rule.

One reporting detail that decides whether you make the deadline. Providers upload attendees to SBS "within fourteen (14) days of the conclusion of the course," and producers do not self-report. A course completed in your deadline week can therefore still be absent from the Division's screen when the deadline passes. Finish the hours with a fortnight's margin, not a day's.

South Dakota Property and Casualty License Fees

$95 to Pearson VUE, $25 to the state. The combination price is the whole of South Dakota's published discount - "The examination fees are $85 for an individual exam or $95 for a combination exam" - and it buys both major lines for ten dollars more than one.

The exam fee is payable at reservation by card or voucher and is not accepted at the test centre. Once a reservation exists, so does personal liability for the fee "whether paid individually or by a third party."

The licence fee is $25 resident, $30 non-resident, covering every line of authority in one filing. Non-resident renewal fees are the exception to South Dakota's flat pricing: they are retaliatory, varying with your home state, and no figure is published.

Renewal is $20 resident, $40 late - the sharpest fee difference in the ordinary producer cycle, and the reason the birth-month deadline is worth a calendar reminder. Appointments cost the insurer $10 resident or $20 non-resident, new or renewal, and are processed annually through March 31 with billing due back by April 30 or the appointments terminate.

The costs South Dakota does not charge are as notable as the ones it does: nothing for pre-licensing, nothing for fingerprinting, nothing for a background report, nothing for errors-and-omissions cover, and nothing per line of authority. The one licence class that breaks the pattern is the surplus line broker at $50 to licence, $100 to renew and $200 late, with a mandatory bond - which the Casualty guide covers.

South Dakota Property and Casualty License Eligibility

Four findings, at SDCL 58-30-148: at least eighteen years of age; no act that is a ground under 58-30-167; the fee paid under 58-2-29; and the examinations passed for the lines applied for.

Residency is home-state residency - "your principal place of residency or your principal place of business" - with no waiting period and no requirement to be in the state to sit the paper.

Thirteen numbered grounds at SDCL 58-30-167 govern refusal, suspension and revocation, and the money penalty behind them has two ceilings only: $5,000 for a producer and $25,000 for an insurer or other licensee, per offense, under SDCL 58-4-28.1.

Two licence classes South Dakota does not issue: property and casualty adjusters and consultants. For a property and casualty producer this is the more consequential of the two absences - claims work that would require an adjuster licence in a neighbouring state is not separately licensed here, and there is no adjuster examination, fee schedule or continuing-education track in the state at all.

And the licence you hold is not the licence you keep by default. SDCL 58-30-153 keeps it in effect only "as long as the fee ... is paid and the education requirements ... are met by the due date," which makes the renewal module above a condition of eligibility rather than an afterthought.

South Dakota Property and 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(1) and ARSD 20:06:18:03(1). The hours must be certified for the classification - property and casualty credits do not satisfy a life and health obligation.

Twenty is the ceiling, not thirty. Hold both major groups and the statute's proviso caps you: "However, no more than twenty hours of continuing education may be required of any licensee holding multiple insurance producer licenses." Note that the cap is inside subdivision (1) and subdivision (2), the four-hour crop hail line, carries none.

Crop hail rewrites the arithmetic. ARSD 20:06:18:03's five subdivisions run: property and casualty alone, ten hours; life, variable or health alone, ten hours; crop hail alone, four hours; both major groups, twenty hours; and crop hail plus one other line, ten hours of which exactly two must be crop hail - with only two crop hail hours counting toward the ten. Crop hail plus more than one other line is twenty hours with two crop hail. The Division's own table renders the three-line case as two crop, eight property/casualty and ten life/health.

Four rules narrow the hours and all four are worth knowing by number. ARSD 20:06:18:18 prohibits carry-over. 20:06:18:20 blocks credit for the same course twice in a period, as a student or an instructor. 20:06:18:03.01 gives a new line of authority until the next period. 20:06:18:13 allows a good-cause extension on a written request reaching the director at least twenty-one days out. No ethics hours are required.

Exemptions come in two kinds. Four are automatic: limited licences for credit life and credit health, travel accident and baggage, bail bonds, and surety bonds. Others are available on request - producers outside the United States, active military, the disabled, and those practising law in South Dakota. And non-resident producers are exempt outright, complying with their home state instead. The renewal module above covers what happens when none of these applies and the deadline passes anyway.

Quick Reference

Official Links