Utah Adjuster Insurance Exam 2026

Two Adjuster Licenses, and a Third Utah Refuses To Issue

The Utah adjuster license is issued by the Utah Insurance Department under Title 31A, Chapter 26 of the Utah Insurance Code. There are exactly two of them. Section 31A-26-203(1) authorizes the commissioner to issue a license to act as an independent adjuster or a public adjuster, and those are the only two the statute contemplates.

An independent adjuster is defined at § 31A-26-102(5) as an adjuster required to be licensed under § 31A-26-201 who engages in insurance adjusting as a representative of one or more insurers. Note the plural — the definition contemplates that you work for several carriers, which is exactly what independent adjusting is.

A public adjuster is the mirror image: § 31A-26-102(9) defines the role as engaging in insurance adjusting as a representative of insureds and claimants under insurance policies. Public adjusting in Utah was transformed in 2026, and the new regime is covered in detail further down this guide.

The third category is the interesting one. A company adjuster — a carrier's own salaried claims employee — is defined by the statute and never licensed by it. § 31A-26-102(1) defines the term, and § 31A-26-201(2)(a) then exempts that person from the license requirement entirely. The Department states the position without hedging: Utah does not license company adjusters.

The scope of "insurance adjusting" itself is broader than most summaries suggest. § 31A-26-102(6) defines it as "directing or conducting the investigation, negotiation, or settlement of a claim under an insurance policy, on behalf of an insurer, policyholder, or a claimant." Both verbs matter. The Department's own web copy paraphrases this as "directing the investigation" and drops "or conducting" — the statute reaches the person doing the work as well as the person supervising it.

The Exemption Turns on Two Words Almost Nobody Reads

The staff adjuster exemption is the most quoted provision in Utah adjuster licensing and the most frequently misquoted. § 31A-26-201(2)(a) exempts "an individual engaged in insurance adjusting as a regular salaried employee of, and not an independent contractor for, an insurer."

The exemption is about employment status, not about who you work for. A person adjusting claims for a carrier under a contract — however exclusive, however long-running, however much the day-to-day work resembles employment — is not a regular salaried employee and is not exempt. That person needs an independent adjuster license.

This is the single most common way an adjuster ends up working unlicensed in Utah in good faith. The carrier believes it is using "its own" adjusters; the adjuster believes the staff exemption applies; and the contract sitting under the arrangement is the thing that defeats it.

The same qualifier appears in § 31A-26-201(2)(e), which exempts a regular salaried employee of a policyholder or claimant — again "and not an independent contractor for." And § 31A-26-201(2)(i) exempts a regular salaried employee of a third party administrator licensed under Chapter 25. All three exemptions rise and fall on the same distinction.

One consequence worth knowing: an adjustment performed by an unlicensed person is a licensing violation, but it does not unwind the claim. § 31A-26-201(3) provides that a claim settlement between an insurer and an insured or claimant "may not be considered invalid as a result of a violation of this section." The exposure is regulatory, not contractual.

Adjusting Without a License

§ 31A-26-201(2) lists ten exemptions, lettered (a) through (j). Enumerating them matters, because a candidate who knows only "staff adjusters are exempt" will get several exam items wrong.

(a) a regular salaried employee of an insurer, and not an independent contractor for one; (b) an arbitrator or umpire selected by the claimant and insurer to decide whether a claim should be paid and how much; (c) an attorney at law acting in an attorney-client relationship; (d) an insurance producer, on conditions covered below; (e) a regular salaried employee of a policyholder or claimant.

(f) an employee of a licensed adjuster who provides only administrative or clerical assistance — the moment that person exercises judgment about a claim, the exemption stops; (g) an individual specially employed to obtain facts about a loss or furnish technical assistance, and the statute lists them: a photographer, estimator, appraiser, marine surveyor, private detective, engineer and handwriting expert.

(h) a holder of a group insurance policy performing administrative activities, receiving no compensation beyond actual expenses reasonably estimated; (i) a regular salaried employee of a licensed third party administrator; and (j) a person who gives advice or assistance without compensation or expectation of it.

The producer exemption at (d) is doubly conditioned and is routinely taught as though it were blanket. It applies only as to (i) a class of insurance for which the producer is licensed under § 31A-23a-106, and (ii) a claim adjusted on the request of an insurer for which the producer is a producer. A producer adjusting a claim for a carrier they do not represent, or in a line they are not licensed for, is outside the exemption on both counts.

Four Classifications, and Where Workers' Compensation Sits

Utah licenses adjusters by classification rather than issuing a single all-lines credential. § 31A-26-204 sets out four, and they apply to both the independent adjuster license and the public adjuster license.

The four are: accident and health insurance — including related service insurance under Chapter 7 and health maintenance organizations and limited health plans under Chapter 8; property and casualty insurance, including a surety or other bond; crop insurance; and workers' compensation insurance.

Workers' compensation is a classification on the adjuster license, not a separate credential. This is worth stating plainly because the question is usually framed the other way around. Utah does not issue a distinct workers' compensation adjuster license — but neither does the property and casualty classification swallow comp. An adjuster handling Utah comp claims needs the workers' compensation classification added.

There is a trap waiting for anyone who goes looking for the answer in the obvious place. § 31A-26-103 is captioned "Workers' compensation claims" and looks exactly like the section that would answer this question. It does not. Its entire operative text provides that insurers writing workers' compensation in Utah are subject to the Labor Commission with respect to claims for and payment of compensation and benefits. It is a dual-jurisdiction provision aimed at carriers, and it says nothing whatever about adjuster licensing.

A fifth classification exists that § 31A-26-204 does not list. The statute contains no title insurance classification for adjusters — yet § 31A-26-206(2)(b)(iii) imposes a continuing education requirement on a "title insurance adjuster," which is difficult to do to a credential that does not exist. The hooks are § 31A-26-204(3)(b), which gives the Title and Escrow Commission rulemaking authority, and § 31A-26-203(5), under which title classification licenses are issued and renewed only with that Commission's concurrence. The title adjuster classification exists by rule.

Utah as a Designated Home State

If you live in a state that does not license adjusters at all, you have no resident license for other states to reciprocate against. The standard answer is a designated home state credential: you name a licensing state, meet its resident standard in full, and other states then treat that license as though it were your resident license.

Utah recognizes the concept at statute level. "Designated home state" is defined at § 31A-26-102(2), and § 31A-26-208, the nonresident jurisdictional agreement section, repeatedly speaks of an adjuster's "home state or designated home state."

The definition is demanding, and reading it is the point. A designated home state is one in which the adjuster does not maintain a principal place of residence or business; where the adjuster's actual resident state does not license adjusters for the line of authority sought; and where the adjuster "has qualified for the license as if the person were a resident" — including any examination requirement, any fingerprint background check requirement, and any continuing education requirement.

That last clause is the operative one. A designated home state license is not a lighter credential obtained on easier terms. It requires you to clear the same bar a Utah resident clears, including the fingerprinting that Utah otherwise applies only to residents and the full 24 hours of continuing education.

One caution on scope. That Utah recognizes designated home state status is established by the statute. Whether Utah issues a Utah-designated-home-state credential to a given applicant, and how any particular other state treats it, is an administrative question that varies and changes. Confirm your intended target states directly rather than assuming a Utah license carries everywhere.

There Is No Prelicensing Education, and the Statute Looks Like There Is

Utah requires no prelicensing education for any insurance license, adjusters included. The Department states it plainly: "Utah has no pre-licensing requirements for licensure. As such, the Department does not offer any study materials or aids for the exams." The Prometric bulletin agrees: "The Utah Insurance Department does not require you to complete a training course before you take a Utah insurance examination."

That negative is worth proving structurally rather than accepting on an agency's say-so, because two provisions in the statute appear to contradict it.

The first is § 31A-26-204, which says a classification "describes the matters to be considered under a prerequisite education or examination required of license applicants under Sections 31A-26-206 and 31A-26-207." That points at § 206 for the education — and § 31A-26-206 is entirely about continuing education. All seven of its subsections were read: rulemaking, the hours, the individuals-only limit, the Utah State Bar exemption, insurer-presented courses, nonresident reciprocity, and record retention. There is no prelicensing text in it. The cross-reference describes what a classification delimits; it imposes nothing.

The second is § 31A-26-207(3)(b), which provides that a person becoming a resident licensee "may not be required to meet prelicensing education or examination requirements" for a line previously held elsewhere, unless the prior state would impose its own on a former Utah resident or the commissioner imposes them by rule. Read alone, that sentence plainly implies Utah has prelicensing requirements to be excused from.

It is producer boilerplate sitting in the adjuster chapter, and the drafting shows. § 31A-26-207(3)(a) opens "a person licensed as an insurance producer in another state who moves to this state," and § 31A-26-207(2)(b)(iii) refers to the time "the applicant applies for an insurance producer license in this state." The subsection was lifted from the producer licensing model. It preserves a non-imposition against other states' regimes and creates no Utah duty.

The rulemaking hook in § 207(3)(b)(ii) has never been exercised for adjusters. Rule R590-244-8, captioned "Examination and Training," is the natural place for such a requirement to live. It imposes training on navigators and does not mention adjusters at all.

Four Exams, and How They Are Scored

Prometric administers every Utah insurance examination. You can test at a Prometric center in Lindon, Salt Lake City, St. George or Taylorsville, or remotely through Prometric's ProProctor service.

There are four adjuster examinations, and they are not all the same length. Series 17-11, Adjuster's Property and Casualty, is 100 questions in 2 hours. Series 17-12, Adjuster's Accident and Health, is also 100 questions in 2 hours. But Series 17-26, Adjuster's Crop, and Series 17-27, Adjuster's Workers Compensation, are each 60 questions in 1 hour.

Each attempt costs $32, or $44 for a combined three-line sitting. Note that the fee itself expires: Prometric's bulletin provides that exam fees are valid for 90 days from receipt.

No official Utah source publishes a passing score. This is not an oversight in this guide; it is the finding. The Prometric bulletin describes the score report in detail and never states a threshold. The Department's examination page states none either. The word "scaled" does not appear in either instrument.

What the bulletin does say is how the result is reported: "At the end of your exam, your score will be shown on the screen and you will receive a printed score report. The report shows your overall score and grade, including the numerical percentage of questions answered correctly and whether you passed or failed," and that the report "also displays the correct percentage in each major section of the exam."

So Utah reports a genuine percentage — not a scaled score — and publishes no threshold against it. The 70% figure that circulates widely traces to commercial test-prep sites rather than to the Department or to Prometric. Treat it as the working assumption it is, and prepare well above it.

There is no stated waiting period between retakes in any official source. The bulletin's instruction is simply that if you do not pass, you repeat the registration and payment steps until you do.

Five Ways Out of the Examination

§ 31A-26-207 contains five distinct routes past the examination, and they operate differently from one another.

The nonresident waiver is mandatory, not discretionary. § 31A-26-207(2) requires the commissioner to waive the examination for an applicant licensed as an adjuster for the same line of authority in another state — or one who applies within 90 days of cancellation of such a license — on certification of good standing from the home state or confirmation through the NAIC database.

Entities are outside the section entirely. § 31A-26-207(4) provides that the requirements "only apply to an applicant who is a natural person." An organization licensing as an adjuster agency does not sit an exam; its designated individuals do.

Members of the Utah State Bar are exempt under § 31A-26-207(5)(a). The same exemption appears again, separately, for continuing education at § 31A-26-206(4). Utah treats Bar membership as satisfying both.

Crop adjusters have two alternative qualifications under § 31A-26-207(5)(b): satisfactory completion of a national crop adjuster program adopted by the commissioner by rule, or the loss adjustment training curriculum and competency testing required by the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation Standard Reinsurance Agreement through the Risk Management Agency of the United States Department of Agriculture. Either one displaces the Series 17-26 exam.

Note what this means in practice for a crop adjuster: the federal training most working crop adjusters already hold is a statutory substitute for the state examination. That is a genuinely useful fact and it is buried in a subsection nobody reads.

Fingerprinting, and Why Three Official Sources Give Three Prices

Fingerprinting is required for resident applicants, and Utah takes the prints by live scan at a Prometric test center — the same locations where you sit the exam. Nonresident adjusters follow the Department's separate nonresident procedure and are generally not fingerprinted in Utah.

The cost is published three different ways by three current official sources, and the reason is structural rather than careless.

The Department's FY2027 fee schedule prints BCI fingerprinting at $15.00 and FBI fingerprinting at $13.25, a total of $28.25. The Prometric bulletin, effective 25 September 2025, prints "an FBI/BCI fingerprint fee ($12.00 FBI/$20.00 BCI)" — $32 — plus "the separate Prometric fingerprint processing fee ($6.00)." NIPR shows $32.

The statute explains the divergence. § 31A-26-203(3)(e) does not set a price at all. It directs the Department to charge the applicant "a fee equal to the aggregate" of the amounts charged by the Department of Public Safety and the FBI. It is a cost pass-through, so the number moves whenever those agencies' costs move, and any published figure is a snapshot of a moment.

Budget for roughly $28 to $38 all-in and confirm the current amount at the Prometric scheduling portal when you book, since that is where you will actually pay it.

The 90-Day Rule Runs in Both Directions

Utah's application timing rule is short, strict, and stated in capitals in the Prometric bulletin: "YOUR APPLICATION AND FEE MUST BE SUBMITTED WITHIN 90 DAYS OF PASSING YOUR EXAM. AFTER 90 DAYS, THE EXAM MUST BE RETAKEN."

Ninety days is a much shorter shelf life than many states allow, and there is no partial credit — the consequence is a full retake at a fresh $32, not a late fee.

The rule also runs the other way, and this half is easier to miss. The Department states that candidates may not submit a license application before taking any required examination. You cannot get the paperwork moving in advance and slot the exam result in afterward. The sequence is fixed: pass first, then apply, within ninety days.

Note that a third ninety-day period is in play and it is not the same one. Prometric's exam fees are valid for 90 days from receipt — that clock governs when you must sit the exam after paying, not when you must apply after passing. Two separate ninety-day windows, running at different times, for different things.

The practical advice is unglamorous and worth following: apply the same week you pass. Have your fingerprints already on file, have the $75 ready, and submit through NIPR or Sircon while the result is fresh.

What It Costs, and Why the Fee Schedule Cannot Tell You

Budget roughly $135 to $145 for one classification if you pass on the first attempt: $32 for the exam, somewhere between $28 and $38 for fingerprinting, and $75 for the application. There is no prelicensing cost because Utah requires no prelicensing.

The $75 application fee is what NIPR charges for a resident or nonresident independent or public adjuster license, and the same $75 for reinstatement. That is the number you will actually pay.

It is not, however, a number you can trace to a published schedule, and that is worth knowing. The Department's current FY2027 Fee Schedule, adopted through H.B. 8, was read in full — 123 entries, alphabetical, beginning at "Bail Bond." The word "adjuster" does not appear anywhere in it. There is no independent adjuster line, no public adjuster line, no emergency, temporary or adjuster agency line.

The statutory chain explains why nobody notices. § 31A-26-202(1)(a)(ii) requires the application be "accompanied by the applicable fee, which is not refunded." § 31A-26-203(2)(a)(vi) requires the applicant to pay "the applicable fees under Section 31A-3-103." And § 31A-3-103 sets no dollar amount for adjusters at all — it delegates, providing that fees "shall be set in accordance with Section 63J-1-504" and that "the commissioner shall publish a schedule of fees." The schedule is the authority, and the schedule does not itemize this license.

Note also that R590-102, the Insurance Department Fee Payment Rule, was repealed effective 1 July 2024, which removed the rule-level home these figures might otherwise have had. The practical answer is to take the amount from NIPR at the moment you apply and not to treat any published figure as fixed.

There is a fee exemption most candidates never hear about. § 31A-26-202(4) waives the license fee entirely for an individual serving in the armed forces of the United States while stationed within Utah, and for the spouse of such a service member or the spouse of a DOD civilian — each conditioned on holding a current license in good standing in another state. This is almost certainly the work of the 2025 special session that added the "DOD civilian" definition.

The License Term Is in a Rule, and the Parity Story Is Fiction

Nothing in Chapter 26 sets a license term. This surprises people who go looking for it. § 31A-26-209, "Form and contents of license," contains no expiration or renewal provision. § 31A-26-213(1) says only that a license "remains in force until" it is revoked, suspended, surrendered, lapsed, or the licensee dies.

The term lives in the administrative rule. R590-244-9 provides that a new individual license expires on the last day of the licensee's birth month following the two-year anniversary, and that a renewed individual license expires on the last day of the licensee's birth month every two years. So: a two-year term, ending on the last day of your birth month.

There is no birth-year parity rule. The widely repeated claim that even birth years renew in even years and odd in odd appears in no Utah statute, no Utah rule and no Department publication. It traces to commercial test-prep material. The term is simply two years from issue, landing on your birth month.

How the rule reaches adjusters at all is worth understanding, because it is a pattern you will meet again. R590-244's licensing sections never use the word "adjuster." A section-by-section reading of them finds nothing about you. But R590-244-2, the Purpose and Scope section, applies the entire rule to any individual or agency licensed under, among others, "Title 31A, Chapter 26, Insurance Adjusters" — and R590-244-1 cites §§ 31A-26-207, -210 and -213 as its authority.

Read scope clauses in both directions. They impose duties a rule's own operative text never mentions, and they can just as easily hollow out a duty that a caption appears to create. In Utah, the rule that governs your license term is one you would never find by searching its body for your job title.

Continuing Education: 24 Hours, and Two Limits the Statute Does Not Contain

§ 31A-26-206(2)(b)(i) sets the requirement: 24 credit hours per two-year licensing period, of which 3 hours must be ethics, and of which at least half must be classroom hours of insurance-related instruction. The ethics hours sit inside the 24; they are not additional. The classroom floor is therefore 12.

Permitted delivery methods are listed in the statute: classroom attendance, home study, watching a video recording, experience credit, or other methods provided by rule. Hours may be earned at any time during the two-year period — there is no requirement to spread them evenly.

A title insurance adjuster needs only 12 hours, still including 3 of ethics, under § 206(2)(b)(iii). And because the "at least half" clause in § 206(2)(b)(i)(C) still applies to that reduced total, the title adjuster's classroom floor is 6, not 12. That second step is regularly dropped.

Two significant limits are in the rule rather than the statute, and one of them appears to contradict the statute.

The first is the insurer-course cap. R590-142-4 provides that "not more than half of the total credit hours required shall be satisfied by courses provided to a producer, consultant, or adjuster licensee by one or more insurers." So a maximum of 12 of your 24 hours may come from carrier-provided training. § 31A-26-206 contains no such cap — and § 206(5) runs the other way, directing the commissioner to designate qualifying courses "including a course presented by an insurer." The statute permits; the rule limits. Cite the rule.

The second is carryover. R590-142 provides that credit hours may not be carried over on renewal. Hours earned beyond 24 in one period are simply not banked, so there is no advantage in front-loading beyond the requirement.

Record retention is longer than the cycle. § 31A-26-206(7) requires documentation to be kept two years after the end of the two-year licensing period to which it applies — a four-year tail in practice. Keep certificates well past the renewal they supported.

Who Does Not Have To Do Continuing Education

Members of the Utah State Bar are exempt outright. § 31A-26-206(4) provides that the continuing education requirements of the section "do not apply to a member of the Utah State Bar." The exemption is unqualified for adjusters — it does not depend on the lawyer practicing insurance law, and it does not require an application.

Organizations are outside the requirement. § 31A-26-206(3) applies the requirements only to a licensee who is an individual. An adjuster agency does not accrue continuing education; the natural persons named on its license do.

There is a legacy exemption for long-tenured licensees, and it has four conditions. § 31A-26-206(2)(d) exempts a licensee who was first licensed before 31 December 1982, provided there has been no continuous lapse exceeding one year — with exemptions approved before 11 May 2011 preserved — provided the licensee requests the exemption, and provided the department approves it. Once approved, no reapplication is needed.

The Department's own continuing education page states that date as 1988. That is the producer threshold. The adjuster statute says 1982, and the statute controls. If you are relying on this exemption, cite § 31A-26-206(2)(d) and expect to have the conversation.

Nonresident reciprocity is two-way, not a courtesy. § 31A-26-206(6) treats a nonresident adjuster as compliant if the adjuster satisfies the home state's adjuster continuing education requirement and if, "on the same basis," that home state treats satisfaction of Utah's requirements as satisfying its own. If your home state does not reciprocate for Utah licensees, the condition is not met and Utah's requirement stands.

The Emergency License: You May Start Before You Apply

Utah has an emergency adjuster license, it is in the statute, and the commissioner's duty to issue is mandatory. § 31A-26-212 provides that on a catastrophe or emergency arising out of a disaster, act of God, riot, civil commotion, conflagration, or other similar occurrence, the commissioner "shall, upon application, issue emergency licenses to persons who are not licensed adjusters."

The application window opens after the work begins. The statute provides that an emergency license "shall be applied for within a week of beginning claims adjustment." Read that in sequence: you may begin adjusting the catastrophe claim, and you then have a week to apply. This is close to unique, and it is the most testable single fact in Utah adjuster licensing.

Duration is 90 days, with one extension. The license "may remain in force for not more than 90 days, unless extended by the commissioner before it expires for an additional period of not more than 90 additional days." Note the timing condition on the extension — it must be granted before the license expires, not afterward. An expired emergency license cannot be extended; it can only be replaced by a new application.

The contracting insurer carries the emergency adjuster's conduct. The statute provides that the insurer who contracts with an independent adjuster so licensed "is responsible for all the independent adjuster's claims practices while so engaged, as if the independent adjuster were a regular salaried employee." The carrier cannot treat an emergency adjuster as an arm's-length contractor for responsibility purposes — the statute deems the relationship to be employment for exactly this question.

The fee is the same as for other adjusters, "unless the commissioner waives the fee." In a genuine catastrophe the waiver is the point of the clause.

One practical note: neither the Department's adjuster page nor its published fee schedule mentions emergency licenses. The authority for this credential is the statute, and the statute is where you should cite it from.

The Temporary License and the Trustee Machinery

§ 31A-26-215 creates a separate and rarely discussed credential. The commissioner may issue a temporary adjuster license for a period not to exceed 180 days and without requiring an examination, where it is necessary for "the servicing of an insurance business in the public interest and to provide continued service to the insureds," or in any other circumstance where the commissioner considers the public interest will best be served.

The eligible recipients are specific: the surviving spouse or court-appointed personal representative of a licensed adjuster who dies or becomes disabled; a member or employee of a licensed business entity on the death or disability of the designated individual; and the designee of a licensed adjuster entering active service in the armed forces.

The commissioner may require a sponsor — a licensed producer who assumes responsibility for the temporary licensee's acts — and may limit or revoke the temporary license by order.

The second half of the section is trustee machinery, and it is unusual enough to be worth knowing. On termination of a license under § 31A-26-213, the commissioner may appoint a trustee to run the former licensee's business. The trustee must be licensed, and preferably no longer actively in business as an adjuster, and must be trustworthy and competent.

The trustee's economics are tightly controlled. Compensation is set by the commissioner, must be equitable, is paid exclusively from commissions on the former adjuster's accounts, and has no priority over creditors. The trustee is liable only for errors "that arise solely from the trustee's negligence."

Two fiduciary rules close the section. Capturing the trustor's clients "is a breach of the trustee's fiduciary duty" — the trustee is a caretaker, not a successor. And the trustee may not purchase the accounts or expiration lists "unless the commissioner expressly ratifies the terms of sale."

Note again the drafting bleed: subsection (1)(b)'s introduction refers to a "temporary insurance producer license" in a section about adjusters. The provision is understood to apply to adjusters, but the language is imported.

Portable Electronics Adjusting and the 25-Person Cap

§ 31A-26-216, enacted in 2012, carves out a specialized regime for portable electronics claims — the phone and device protection programs sold at retail. It contains one of the few hard numbers in Utah adjuster licensing.

The section defines an automated claims adjudication system as a preprogrammed system for the collection, data entry, calculation and final resolution of portable electronics insurance claims. Three conditions attach: it may only be used by a Utah-licensed independent adjuster, a Utah-licensed producer, or a supervised individual; it must comply with the title's claims payment requirements; and it must be certified as compliant by a Utah-licensed independent adjuster who is an officer of an organization licensed under Chapter 26.

That certification requirement is worth pausing on. The statute makes a named, licensed individual personally responsible for attesting that an automated system handles claims lawfully. It is a rare instance of a licensing statute reaching a piece of software through a person.

The exemption is where the number lives. An individual is exempt from adjuster licensure for portable electronics claims if they collect claim information and perform data entry, are an employee of a licensed independent adjuster or its affiliate, and are one of no more than 25 individuals supervised by a Utah-licensed independent adjuster or an exempt Utah-licensed producer.

Twenty-five is a span-of-control cap, and it is per supervisor. A claims operation running 60 intake staff on portable electronics needs at least three supervising licensed independent adjusters to keep everyone inside the exemption. Exceed the ratio and the surplus staff are adjusting without a license.

Agency Licensing, Designated Individuals and Supervision Liability

An organization that acts as an independent or public adjuster must be licensed as an agency. § 31A-26-209(3) requires it, and requires that the agency license "set forth the names of all natural persons licensed under this chapter who are authorized to act" for it. The agency license is a roster as much as a credential.

"Organization" is defined broadly at § 31A-26-102(7) as a person other than a natural person — and expressly includes a sole proprietorship by which a natural person does business under an assumed name. An adjuster trading under a business name rather than their own has created an organization for these purposes.

§ 31A-26-210 carries the supervision rules and they have teeth. The agency must maintain a designated responsible licensed individual, must report terminations, and is subject to a rebuttable presumption that a designated licensee acts on behalf of the agency.

The liability standard is stated in two branches: the organization is liable where it was "reckless or negligent in its supervision" of a licensee, or where it "knowingly participates" in the conduct. Negligent supervision is a lower bar than participation, and it is the branch that catches an agency which simply was not paying attention.

§ 31A-26-211 adds a related duty aimed at carriers rather than agencies. The commissioner may require an authorized insurer with employees engaged in insurance adjusting to designate one or more natural persons to whom the commissioner or staff may direct inquiries about the insurer's claims adjustments — a claims liaison. Insurers must report each designee's name, title, business address and telephone number, and any changes.

Read § 31A-26-211 alongside the company adjuster exemption and the logic becomes clear. Utah does not license the carrier's own claims staff, so it has no direct regulatory handle on them. The claims liaison is how the Department reaches into a claims operation whose adjusters are, by design, unlicensed.

Lapse, Reinstatement, Probation and Reporting

§ 31A-26-214.5 sets out how a license lapses, and the list is worth reading because three of the four routes are administrative rather than disciplinary. A license lapses for failure to pay a fee when due; failure to complete continuing education before submitting the renewal application; failure to submit a completed renewal application under § 31A-26-202; or, for a nonresident, failure to maintain an active license in the licensee's home state.

Note the ordering in the second one. Continuing education must be complete before the renewal application is submitted — not merely before the period ends. Filing the renewal with hours outstanding is itself the lapse trigger.

Reinstatement runs for one year. § 31A-26-213(2) permits a lapsed or voluntarily surrendered license to be reinstated within one year after the day it is no longer in force — except that a voluntarily surrendered license "may not be reinstated after the license period in which the license is voluntarily surrendered." Surrendering voluntarily is therefore materially worse than letting a license lapse, because it can cut the window short.

§ 31A-26-213(10) delegates the renewal and reinstatement procedures themselves to rule, which is why the operational detail sits in R590-244 rather than in the statute.

Probation is capped at 24 months under § 31A-26-214, which also sets out the grounds for revocation.

The reporting duties are continuous, not just at application. § 31A-26-203(2) requires an applicant or licensee to report administrative actions taken in any jurisdiction within 30 days of final disposition, and criminal prosecutions within 30 days of the initial appearance before a court — with copies of the complaint or equivalent. The criminal trigger is the first court appearance, not conviction, so the duty attaches long before any outcome is known.

Character requirements under § 31A-26-205 apply throughout: good-faith intent to act as an adjuster, competence and trustworthiness, and a minimum age of 18. For an organization, all partners, directors and principal officers must be trustworthy.

The Unfair Claims Statute Splits the General Business Practice Element

§ 31A-26-303 is Utah's unfair claim settlement practices statute. Its history line reads "Amended by Chapter 91, 1987 General Session" — it has not been touched in thirty-nine years, which makes it one of the most stable provisions an adjuster will work under.

The chapeau is deceptively simple: "No insurer or person representing an insurer may engage in any unfair claim settlement practice under Subsections (2), (3), and (4)." Note that it binds "any person representing an insurer," not merely the insurer — which is how the section reaches adjusters.

What follows is a split, and getting it wrong in either direction produces a confidently wrong answer.

§ 303(2) contains three acts with NO frequency element. Its chapeau reads "Each of the following acts is an unfair claim settlement practice" — full stop. A single act violates. The three are: knowingly misrepresenting material facts or policy provisions at issue in connection with a claim; attempting to use an application altered by the insurer without the insured's notice, knowledge or consent as a basis for settling or refusing to settle; and failing to settle promptly under one portion of coverage where liability and amount are reasonably clear in order to influence settlements under other portions of the coverage.

§ 303(3) contains eight acts that require a general business practice. Its chapeau reads "Each of the following is an unfair claim settlement practice if committed or performed with such frequency as to indicate a general business practice." These are the familiar ones: failing to acknowledge and act promptly on communications; failing to adopt reasonable standards for prompt investigation; compelling insureds to litigate by offering substantially less than amounts ultimately recovered; failing after payment to identify the coverage on request; failing to give a reasonable explanation for a denial or a compromise offer; appealing substantially all arbitration awards favoring insureds to force lesser settlements; requiring a preliminary claim report and then duplicative formal proof-of-loss forms; and not attempting in good faith to effectuate a prompt, fair and equitable settlement of claims in which liability is reasonably clear.

§ 303(4) lets the commissioner define further unfair practices by rule after finding them misleading, deceptive, unfairly discriminatory, overreaching or an unreasonable restraint on competition. That subsection is the authority for R590-190, where the operational rules actually live.

The Statute Expressly Creates No Private Cause of Action

§ 31A-26-303(5) is one sentence and it decides a great deal: "This section does not create any private cause of action."

There is no ambiguity to litigate and no subsection-by-subsection analysis to perform. No part of Utah's unfair claim settlement practices statute is privately actionable. An insured who is the victim of a § 303 violation cannot sue on § 303.

Enforcement is the commissioner's alone, and it runs through § 31A-2-308. The penalties are real: forfeitures of up to $2,500 or $5,000 per violation depending on the class of violation, court-imposed forfeitures of up to $10,000 per day, and criminal fines of $10,000 for a corporation or $5,000 otherwise.

The practical consequence for an adjuster is that § 303 is a regulatory standard, not a litigation standard. Violating it exposes the carrier and the individual to departmental action. It does not hand the claimant a cause of action, and it does not, by itself, establish liability in a suit the claimant brings on some other theory.

The private remedy in Utah is the common-law bad faith claim, which is covered below. That claim exists independently of the statute, was created by the courts, and is measured by a different standard. Keeping the two apart is the single most useful conceptual move an adjuster working Utah claims can make.

A note on where this leaves third-party claimants: § 31A-26-301, the timely payment statute, applies only to first party benefits, and § 303 creates no private action for anyone. A third-party claimant in Utah is largely outside both — with the notable exception of the limitations notice discussed below, which reaches them expressly.

Every Numeric Deadline Is in the Rule, Not the Statute

§ 31A-26-301, "Timely payment of claims," contains no numbers at all. It requires that "an insurer shall timely pay every valid insurance claim made by an insured" and then delegates: "By rule the commissioner may prescribe the periods of time within which payment is required to be made to be timely" and the reasonable interest rates chargeable on late payments.

So an adjuster who reads the statute learns the duty and none of the deadlines. Every operative clock is in R590-190, the Unfair Property, Casualty, and Title Claims Settlement Practices Rule.

Fifteen days to acknowledge. R590-190-6 requires an insurer to acknowledge receiving a notice of loss within 15 days, to provide a substantive response to a claimant within 15 days, and, on receiving notice of loss, to provide necessary forms and instructions within 15 days. The acknowledgment duty is excused where payment is made within the 15 days, or where the insurer reasonably explains the failure.

Thirty days to accept or deny. R590-190-10: "Within 30 days after receiving a complete proof of loss, an insurer shall complete its investigation of the claim and shall notify the first party claimant of its acceptance or denial" — unless the investigation cannot reasonably be completed within that time. If more time is needed, the insurer must notify the claimant within 30 days of the proof of loss, giving the reasons more time is needed.

Then every 45 days. The rule requires a further explanatory letter "within 45 days after sending the initial notification and within every 45 days thereafter." This continuing duty is excused if the claimant is represented by legal counsel or by a public adjuster — a carve-out that matters more now that Utah has a fully built-out public adjuster regime.

Thirty days to pay. R590-190-9 makes it an unfair practice to fail to pay a first party claim within 30 days of receiving a proof of loss where liability is reasonably clear, and separately to fail to deliver or mail the amount owed on a first party or third party claim within 30 days.

Every one of these periods is stated in the rule as "days" without qualification, so every one is calendar days. No provision of R590-190 uses "business days" or "working days." Do not import a business-day convention from another state's rule or from a national course — in Utah the weekend counts.

The 60-Day Limitations Notice, and It Reaches Third Parties

This is the most unusual affirmative duty in Utah claims practice and it is easy to miss because it sits inside a section about settlement standards.

R590-190-10 requires an insurer to notify a claimant of the running of the limitations period, and the notice "shall be given at least 60 days before the expiration date."

The duty runs to unrepresented first party AND third party claimants. That is remarkable in context: Utah's timely-payment statute is expressly limited to first party benefits, and its unfair claims statute creates no private action for anyone. Yet the rule obliges the carrier to warn an unrepresented third-party claimant that their time to sue is about to expire.

The obligation is limited to the unrepresented. A claimant with counsel is presumed to have their own advice on limitations, and the rule does not require the carrier to duplicate it.

Read this alongside R590-190-9, which separately makes it an unfair practice to mislead a claimant about the limitations period and to advise a claimant not to obtain the services of an attorney. Taken together, Utah's rule is unusually protective of the unrepresented claimant: the carrier may not steer them away from counsel, may not mislead them about their deadline, and must affirmatively warn them before it runs.

For an adjuster, the practical implication is a diary rule. The relevant limitations period must be identified early in the file, not at the end, because the notice obligation matures 60 days before expiry — and for a first party property claim the period runs from the inception of the loss, not from denial, so it may be much closer than it appears.

What the Rule Forbids Beyond the Clocks

R590-190-9 carries a list of prohibited practices that are not about timing at all, and several of them are more specific than a national course would suggest.

Compensation may not be tied to claim savings. The rule bars compensating an employee, producer or contractor based on savings from denying payment. This reaches incentive structures as well as explicit bonuses, and it applies to contractors as well as staff.

A denial is limited to the reasons given. The rule prohibits denying a claim based on a provision that was not referenced in the denial. An adjuster who denies on one ground and later discovers a better one cannot simply substitute it.

Releases must match the occurrence. Requiring releases broader than the occurrence is prohibited. So is deducting premiums owed on other policies from a loss payment.

The rule also prohibits refusing to pay without conducting a reasonable investigation, denying medical treatment after preauthorization, misleading a claimant about the limitations period, advising a claimant not to obtain the services of an attorney, and failing to pay interest at the legal rate under Title 15 on first and third party claim amounts.

R590-190-12 adds automobile-specific rules. An insurer may not refuse to disclose policy limits on request in an auto claim, and releases may not be printed on the back of a check. The second is a practice some claims operations still use and it is squarely prohibited.

R590-190-11 requires an auto total loss file to be reopened if the claimant cannot purchase a comparable vehicle at the settlement amount, provided the claimant raises it within 30 days of receiving the cash settlement payment.

The Adjuster's Own Conduct Rules, and the Attorney Carve-Back

§ 31A-26-312 imposes duties directly on the individual — it opens "an independent adjuster or public adjuster may not" — and it is the section under which an adjuster's personal conduct is judged.

(a) No participating in the repair. An adjuster may not participate directly or indirectly in the reconstruction, repair or restoration of damaged property that is the subject of a claim they adjust.

(b) No interested referrals. The adjuster may not engage in activities reasonably construed as a conflict of interest — soliciting or accepting remuneration from, having a financial interest in, or deriving direct or indirect benefit from a salvage, repair or construction firm that obtains business in connection with a claim the adjuster contracted to adjust.

(c) No soliciting employment for an attorney, directly or indirectly, and no contracting with an insured primarily to refer them to an attorney without actually performing the adjusting services an adjuster customarily provides.

(d) No acting for an attorney in having an insured sign an attorney representation agreement.

(e) No referral fees at all. The adjuster may not accept a fee, commission or other consideration for referring an insured to a third party — and the statute lists them: an attorney, appraiser, umpire, construction company, contractor, repair firm or salvage company.

And then the carve-back, which is the part worth memorizing. § 31A-26-312(2): "Subsection (1)(c) may not be construed to prohibit an independent adjuster or public adjuster from recommending a specific attorney to an insured." Soliciting employment for an attorney is prohibited. Recommending one to an insured is expressly permitted. The line falls between acting as the attorney's marketing channel and answering an insured's question.

Violations are enforced under § 31A-2-308. Note separately that § 31A-26-309 imposes a duty to report illegal insurance by cross-reference — its entire text is "Section 31A-15-110 applies to the adjuster's duty to report illegal insurance."

The Public Adjuster Regime Was Rebuilt in 2026

Part 4 of Chapter 26 is new law. Sections 31A-26-401, -402, -403.1, -404, -405, -406 and -407 were enacted or rewritten by Chapter 45 of the 2026 General Session, effective 6 May 2026. Anyone working from a codification published before that date has a materially different statute.

§ 31A-26-401 governs the contract, and it is prescriptive. A public adjuster may not act without a written contract on a form filed with the department under § 31A-21-201, executed in duplicate, with a signed copy given to the insured at the time of signing. An unfiled form may not be used — and the adjuster may not redact the compensation provision from the form as filed.

Five contract terms are void by name. A public adjuster contract may not include a term that: lets the adjuster collect its percentage fee on money that is due but unpaid by the insurer; lets the adjuster take the entire fee out of the first check rather than a percentage of each; requires the insured to authorize a check in the adjuster's name only; imposes a collection cost or late fee; or "prevents an insured from pursuing a civil remedy."

The insurer is drawn into the compliance chain. The insured signs a notification letter to the insurer, and the insurer must then verify the public adjuster's license with the department. Department Bulletin 2026-3 (21 April 2026) requires the carrier to verify through the Department's Licensee Search and document the claim file to confirm the verification was completed, notifying the claimant and working directly with them if the adjuster is unlicensed.

Bulletin 2026-4 (14 July 2026) adds the filing mechanics: public adjuster contract forms are emailed to the Department, and a contract form cannot be used until it has been filed.

§ 31A-26-404 requires a trust account. Funds received or held on behalf of an insured go into a trust account at a federally insured depository institution — with a branch in Utah for a resident licensee, in the adjuster's home state for a nonresident, or where the loss occurred — and whose primary regulator authorizes it to engage in trust business.

§ 31A-26-403.1 is the assignment-of-benefits provision and it cuts in an unexpected direction. A property insurance policy may prohibit assignment of rights or benefits to a property repair contractor, roofing company, disaster clean-up company, appraiser, inspector or other person hired to remedy the damage, and that prohibition may not be circumvented by a power of attorney. But the policy may not prohibit assignment to a public adjuster. Utah authorizes the anti-assignment clause and then carves the public adjuster out of it.

Public Adjuster Compensation: the Caps and the 72-Hour Rule

§ 31A-26-402 permits four compensation structures — an hourly fee, a flat rate, a percentage of the total amount the insurer pays to resolve the claim, or another method — and attaches a disclosure duty to each.

An hourly contract must state the rate and how it applies to the hours of service. A flat fee contract must state the amount. A percentage contract must state the exact percentage that applies to the settlement. And any other method requires a detailed explanation of how the amount is determined.

§ 31A-26-402(3) adds an expense regime: the contract must state the type of initial expenses, with dollar estimates, that the insured approves for reimbursement out of the claim proceeds, and the adjuster must give the insured an itemized invoice of each expense at the conclusion of the claim.

The compensation caps are at § 31A-26-402(6)(c). A public adjuster may not charge, agree to or accept compensation exceeding 10% for a catastrophic insurance claim settlement, or 20% for a non-catastrophic insurance claim settlement.

§ 31A-26-402(4) is the provision most likely to catch a public adjuster out. If the insurer, not later than 72 hours after the day the loss is reported, either pays or commits in writing to pay the policy limit, the public adjuster may not take a percentage fee at all. The adjuster is instead entitled to reasonable compensation based on time spent and expenses incurred, until the claim is paid or the written commitment is received. A fee structure keyed to how fast the carrier moves is genuinely unusual.

Two absolute prohibitions close the section. The adjuster may not require, demand or accept any fee, retainer, compensation, deposit or thing of value before the settlement of a claim — no advance retainers. And the adjuster may not accept a payment that violates the section even where the insured has given written authorization; the insured cannot consent around the rule.

Payment mechanics are prescribed at § 31A-26-402(5). Any person paying policy proceeds must include the insured as a payee on the draft or check and require the insured's written signature and endorsement. The adjuster may not sign or endorse a draft on the insured's behalf.

Sixteen Standards of Conduct, and a Retention Rule With No Period

§ 31A-26-405 sets out sixteen prohibitions on public adjuster conduct. Several are aimed squarely at the solicitation practices that follow a catastrophe.

A public adjuster may not solicit an insured during the progress of a loss-producing occurrence — that is, while the fire is still burning or the water still rising. Nor may the adjuster advertise or infer that property is damaged before completing an inspection, offer to pay or waive the insured's deductible as an inducement, or offer a free inspection of property other than the property that is the subject of the claim.

The conflict rules parallel those for independent adjusters but go further. The adjuster may not participate in reconstruction, repair or restoration of the contracted property, solicit or accept compensation from or hold an interest in a business supplying products or services on the claim, hold a financial interest in any aspect of the claim except the compensation set in the written contract, acquire an interest in salvage except as authorized by the contract, or recommend a repairer in whom the adjuster has a financial interest or from whom the adjuster may receive referral compensation.

Three prohibitions go to the integrity of the representation itself. The adjuster may not adjust a claim exceeding the adjuster's own competence, knowledge or expertise; may not represent or act as a company adjuster or independent adjuster on the same claim; and may not agree to a loss settlement without the insured's knowledge or consent.

Two more close the loop on payments and contracts: no accepting, signing or endorsing a check that does not name the insured as payee, and no allowing a repair contractor, roofing company, disaster clean-up company, appraiser or inspector to obtain the insured's signature on the adjuster's contract.

§ 31A-26-406 is captioned "Record retention requirements" and it is worth reading carefully, because it does not contain a retention period. What it requires is that the adjuster keep, at the address registered with the commissioner, a record of each investigation, adjustment or transaction — and it then specifies eleven categories of content: the insured's name; the date, location and amount of the loss; a copy of the contract; for each related policy the insurer's name, policy amount, expiration date and number; an itemized statement of the insured's recoveries; an itemized statement of all compensation received; a register of all money received, deposited, disbursed or withdrawn including fee transfers, trust disbursements and interest-bearing transactions; the name of the public adjuster who executed the contract; the insured's attorney if any; the insurance company's claims representative; and documentation of applicable financial responsibility requirements.

The section prescribes what the record must contain and never says how long to keep it. Do not assume a period from another state or from the continuing education rule's four-year tail — the statute is silent, and any figure attributed to § 31A-26-406 should be treated with suspicion until someone can point to the words.

Rescission: Ten Calendar Days, Fifteen Business Days, One Transaction

§ 31A-26-311 gives the insured a right to rescind a public adjuster contract. It was enacted by Chapter 204 of the 1986 General Session and was not amended in 2026, which is how Utah ended up with two clocks that do not match.

The right is ten days and it is triggered by entering into the contract. The insured "may rescind that contract by delivering written notice of rescission to the public adjuster within 10 days of entering into the contract." Note three things: the notice must be written, it must be delivered to the adjuster, and the period runs from entering into the contract — not from delivery of a copy, not from the start of work.

Because the statute says "days" without qualification, these are calendar days.

The right can be extinguished before it expires. § 31A-26-311 provides that the rescission right "does not apply if prior to the rescission the public adjuster has effected an acceptable settlement of the claim." An adjuster who settles the claim quickly ends the insured's ability to rescind, even if the ten days have not run. That is a meaningful asymmetry and insureds are rarely told about it.

The refund obligation comes from the new law and uses a different convention. Under § 31A-26-401, on rescission the adjuster must return anything of value received "within 15 business days after receiving the notice of rescission."

So a single rescission involves a 10 calendar day right and a 15 business day refund duty — enacted forty years apart, in two different sections, using two different day conventions, and never harmonized. Count each one on its own terms.

First-Party Bad Faith Sounds in Contract, Not Tort

This is the most important inversion in Utah insurance law and the one a national course will get wrong. In most states, first-party bad faith is a tort. In Utah it is a breach of contract.

Beck v. Farmers Insurance Exchange, Docket 18926 (Utah, 12 June 1985) established the architecture. In the first-party context the court held that "the duties and obligations of the parties are contractual rather than fiduciary," and that "without more, a breach of those implied or express duties can give rise only to a cause of action in contract, not one in tort."

It is still the law. In Newman v. LM General Insurance Co., Docket 20241295-CA (Utah Court of Appeals, 19 June 2026) the court restated it directly: "a bad faith claim brought based on an insurer's failure to perform its duties under a first-party insurance contract sounds in contract rather than tort."

The duties themselves are the three every Utah adjuster should be able to recite. The insurer must diligently investigate the facts, fairly evaluate the claim, and act promptly and reasonably in rejecting or settling it. Those are the operative standards — not a general reasonableness test and not the unfair claims statute, which creates no private action.

The defense is that the claim was fairly debatable. As restated in Newman, "when a claim is fairly debatable, the insurer is entitled to debate it, whether the debate concerns a matter of fact or law." The debate must be genuine, and the file has to show it — which is precisely why R590-190-4's documentation rule and the Beck duty to investigate reinforce each other.

The contract characterization drives the remedies. Damages are not capped at the policy limits — Beck declined to limit recovery for breach of the duty to investigate, bargain and settle in good faith to the amount specified in the policy. Consequential damages are available where they are within the contemplation of the parties. Punitive damages are not available on a first-party breach, because the claim sounds in contract.

Emotional distress damages are narrow. Beck allows that "in unusual cases, damages for mental anguish might be provable," but not for "the mere disappointment, frustration, or anxiety normally experienced in the process of filing an insurance claim and negotiating a settlement."

Third-Party Bad Faith Is a Tort, and the Standard Is Higher

Beck draws a sharp line between the two contexts, and the line is the reason Utah's law works the way it does. Where the insurer is defending or settling a claim brought against its insured, the relationship is not merely contractual.

In the third-party context the insurer "must act in good faith and be as zealous in protecting the interests of the insured as it would be in regard to its own." That is a fiduciary-style standard, and breaching it sounds in tort.

The reason for the distinction is structural rather than formalistic. In a first-party claim the insured and insurer are adversaries in a straightforward commercial sense — they are negotiating over money owed under a contract. In a third-party claim the insurer has taken control of the insured's defense and holds the settlement decision, so the insured's exposure to an excess judgment is in the insurer's hands. Control justifies the heightened duty.

The practical consequences follow from the tort characterization. Because it is a tort, the remedies are not limited by contract principles, and the damages analysis reaches consequences the parties never contemplated when the policy was written — most obviously an excess judgment against the insured.

For an adjuster handling liability claims in Utah, the operational implication is about settlement posture within limits. Where liability is clear and the demand is within the policy limit, the zealous-as-for-itself standard is the one being applied to the decision not to settle — not the softer fairly-debatable standard that governs a first-party denial.

One caution on citation practice. Utah's punitive damages jurisprudence in the insurance context runs through litigation that reached the United States Supreme Court and returned, and several widely circulated citations for those decisions are demonstrably wrong — including one national database that prints a 2001 Utah Supreme Court opinion under a 1989 reporter volume. Where a case matters to a position you are taking, identify it by docket number, court and decision date rather than by a reporter cite you have not verified.

Whether an Adjuster Can Be Sued Personally Is Unresolved

No Utah appellate decision holds either that an individual adjuster can be sued personally for mishandling a claim or that they cannot. This guide states that as the finding rather than picking a side, because the authority genuinely runs both ways and a confident answer would be an invention.

The argument against personal liability is structural and fairly strong. Beck characterizes the first-party duty as arising from the insurance contract — and the adjuster is not a party to that contract. If the duty is contractual and the adjuster has no contract with the insured, the claim has nowhere to attach. § 31A-26-303(5) removes any statutory hook by foreclosing a private action, and § 31A-26-312(3) channels adjuster misconduct into administrative penalties under § 31A-2-308 rather than private suit.

The argument for potential liability starts from the observation that Utah imposes duties on adjusters personally. § 31A-26-312 opens "an independent adjuster or public adjuster may not," and the entire 2026 public adjuster part regulates the individual. A plaintiff would argue that an independent tort duty — misrepresentation, most plausibly — survives alongside the contract claim against the carrier, and that the legislature's willingness to regulate adjusters personally supports one.

Neither argument has been tested to a published holding. The question is live enough that Utah defense practitioners write about it, which is itself evidence that it is contested rather than settled.

What an adjuster should take from this is practical rather than doctrinal. The absence of a controlling holding is not protection. It means the question would be litigated on its facts, and the facts that would matter are the ones in the claim file: whether the investigation was diligent, whether representations about coverage were accurate, and whether the conduct rules in § 31A-26-312 were observed.

Three Years From the Inception of the Loss, and the Policy May Not Shorten It

§ 31A-21-313(1)(a) sets the first-party limitations period: an action on a written policy or contract of first party insurance must be commenced "within three years after the inception of the loss."

The trigger is the loss, not the denial. This is the single most consequential thing about the provision. In many states the period runs from breach or denial; in Utah the clock starts when the loss occurs. On a claim that is investigated slowly, reopened, or denied late, the limitations period can be substantially consumed — or even expire — before the claimant has anything to sue about.

That is also why the 60-day limitations notice in R590-190-10 matters so much operationally. The carrier's duty to warn an unrepresented claimant matures 60 days before a deadline that started running at the loss.

A policy may not shorten the period. § 31A-21-313(3) provides that an insurance policy may not limit the time for beginning an action to a period shorter than the statute allows, may not prescribe in what court an action may be brought, and may not provide that no action may be brought. The twelve-month suit clause that appears in standard property forms in other states is void in Utah to the extent it shortens the three years.

The period is tolled during appraisal or arbitration. § 31A-21-313(5). Adjusters routinely miss this, and it can be the difference between a timely and an untimely suit on a file that spent a year in appraisal.

Suit can also be premature. § 31A-21-313(4) bars an action to compel payment until the earliest of 60 days after proof of loss, waiver of the proof of loss requirement, or the insurer's denial of full payment. There is a window before which the claimant cannot sue and after which they can no longer sue, and both ends are statutory.

Two special periods sit outside the general rule. A fidelity bond claim runs its inception from the first denial under § 313(1)(b). And personal injury protection claims get four years under § 31A-22-307(7)(a) rather than three — an exception added in 2023 that is easy to overlook because it lives in the motor vehicle chapter rather than in § 31A-21-313.

Comparative Fault Is Measured Against the Aggregate, and the Bar Is 50 Percent

§ 78B-5-818 sets Utah's comparative fault rule, and two features of it are routinely mis-stated.

Fault is compared to the aggregate, not defendant by defendant. Subsection (2) permits recovery "from any defendant or group of defendants whose fault, combined with the fault of persons immune from suit and nonparties to whom fault is allocated, exceeds the fault of the person seeking recovery." The comparison is against the combined fault of everyone on the other side of the ledger — including immune persons and allocated nonparties, who are not defendants at all.

The bar falls at 50 percent, not 51. Because the statute requires that the combined fault exceed the plaintiff's, a plaintiff who is exactly 50% at fault recovers nothing — the other side's 50% does not exceed the plaintiff's 50%. Charts that describe Utah as a "51% bar" state get this backwards at the decisive point.

There is no joint and several liability. § 78B-5-818(3) provides that "no defendant is liable to any person seeking recovery for any amount in excess of the proportion of fault attributed to that defendant," and § 78B-5-820 confirms that liability is limited to each party's proportion and that there is no contribution. Utah is a several-liability-only jurisdiction.

For an adjuster the practical effect is that allocation is the whole exposure analysis. A defendant at 30% fault pays 30% and cannot be reached for a co-defendant's share, however insolvent that co-defendant may be. And because fault may be allocated to immune persons and nonparties, the denominator in the comparison can include people who will never write a check.

No-Fault: the PIP Schedule and the Tort Threshold

Utah is a no-fault state. Personal injury protection is mandatory under § 31A-22-302, and § 31A-22-307 sets the benefit schedule.

Medical benefits: not less than $3,000 per person — covering medical, surgical, X-ray, dental and rehabilitation services, prosthetic devices, ambulance, hospital and nursing services. Lost income: the lesser of $250 per week or 85% of gross income plus loss of earning capacity, for a maximum of 52 consecutive weeks. Household services: $20 per day, for a maximum of 365 days. Funeral, burial or cremation: $1,500 per person. Death benefit to heirs: $3,000.

Both the income and household-services benefits carry the same waiting rule: not payable for the first three days unless the disability exceeds two consecutive weeks.

Deductibles are prohibited. § 31A-22-307(6): "Deductibles are not permitted with respect to the insurance coverages required under this section."

§ 31A-22-309(1)(a) sets the tort threshold — the injury categories that let a person sue for general damages despite the no-fault bar. There are six: death; dismemberment; permanent disability or permanent impairment based upon objective findings; permanent disfigurement; a bone fracture; or medical expenses to a person in excess of $3,000.

"A bone fracture" is on the list and is regularly omitted from national summaries. It was added after 2017 — the superseded version of the section carried only five categories with no fracture among them. A simple, fully healed fracture with modest medical bills clears the threshold on its own.

The threshold does not apply to uninsured motorist claims. § 31A-22-309(1)(b) is explicit, and it is a meaningful carve-out: a claimant pursuing UM coverage is not required to clear the tort threshold first.

PIP is reduced by workers' compensation benefits and by active-duty military benefits under § 31A-22-309(3), and where a person is insured under more than one policy, the policy insuring the vehicle in use during the accident is primary under § 309(4).

Overdue PIP Earns 1.5 Percent a Month and a Statutory Attorney Fee

§ 31A-22-309(5) governs how PIP benefits are paid, and it contains two consequences that make prompt payment materially cheaper than slow payment.

Benefits are paid monthly as expenses are incurred — not in a lump sum at the end. Benefits for any period are overdue if the insurer does not pay within 30 days after receiving reasonable proof of the fact and amount of expenses incurred.

Partial proof starts a partial clock. If reasonable proof is not supplied as to the entire claim, the amount that is supported becomes overdue if not paid within 30 days, and any remainder later supported by reasonable proof is separately overdue 30 days after that proof arrives. An adjuster cannot hold the supported portion hostage to the unsupported one.

Overdue amounts bear interest at 1.5% per month. That is 18% annualized, running automatically from the due date, without any need for the claimant to demand it.

And there is a statutory fee shift. § 31A-22-309(5)(f) provides that the person entitled to benefits may bring an action in contract to recover the expenses plus interest — and that if the insurer is required by the action to pay any overdue benefits and interest, "the insurer is also required to pay a reasonable attorney's fee to the claimant."

Chapter 45 of the 2026 General Session added a reimbursement-return mechanism at § 309(6)(c). Where a liability insurer has already reimbursed a no-fault insurer and then determines it needs some of that money to settle a third-party claim, it gives written notice identifying the amount and the third-party insurer to be paid — and the no-fault insurer must return it. The notice clause describes the period as 15 days while the operative clause requires return within 15 business days; the operative clause is the one that imposes the duty.

Underlying all of this, § 309(6)(a) provides that reimbursement between insurers is decided by mandatory, binding arbitration — and that there is no right of reimbursement at all where the liable party's insurer has tendered its policy limit.

Minimum Limits, and Why Two Schedules Are Live at Once

§ 31A-22-304 raised Utah's minimum motor vehicle liability limits, and the way the increase was written means an adjuster must identify which schedule a policy was written under before evaluating a claim.

For policies issued or renewed on or after 1 January 2025: $30,000 per person, $65,000 per accident, $25,000 property damage — or a $90,000 combined single limit.

For policies issued or renewed on or before 31 December 2024: $25,000 / $65,000 / $15,000, or an $80,000 combined single limit.

The trigger is the policy's issue or renewal date, not the accident date. That is the operative point. A loss occurring today under a policy written before the switch is governed by the older, lower limits. Both schedules remain live simultaneously, and they will until every pre-2025 policy has renewed through.

There is a permanent carve-out. § 31A-22-304(3) leaves self-insured private rental fleets at the older 25/65/15 or $80,000 combined single limit. That is not a transitional provision — it is a standing exception.

One point on provenance worth noting: the increase came from a single act, and the effective date is written into the operative text of the statute itself as "issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2025" rather than sitting in a separate effective-date section. No later session moved it. Where you see a different date attributed to this change, it is wrong.

UM and UIM Have Different Floors, and UIM Is Add-On

Utah's uninsured and underinsured motorist rules diverge from one another in ways that are easy to conflate.

The floors are different. Uninsured motorist coverage may not be sold with limits lower than the § 31A-22-304 minimum bodily injury limits — so 30/65 for policies issued or renewed on or after 1 January 2025. Underinsured motorist coverage has its own, much lower statutory floor: $10,000 per person and $20,000 per accident, under § 31A-22-305.3(3)(i). Do not assume the two match.

UIM is add-on, not difference-in-limits, and set-off is expressly forbidden. § 31A-22-305.3(3)(k)(ii) provides that underinsured motorist coverage "may not be set off against the liability coverage of the owner or operator of an underinsured motor vehicle, but shall be added to, combined with, or stacked upon the liability coverage of the owner or operator of the underinsured motor vehicle to determine the limit of coverage available to the injured person." The tortfeasor's liability limit is not subtracted from the UIM limit; the two are added.

Rejection and reduction use different forms, and the distinction is procedural but real. UM may be rejected in express writing on a form the insurer provides, which must include a reasonable explanation of the purpose of uninsured motorist coverage. But buying less than the insured's liability limits requires a signed acknowledgment form that is filed with the department and contains prescribed explanatory language. The rejection form is the insurer's; the reduction form is the Department's.

Stacking is prohibited, with carefully drawn exceptions. § 31A-22-305(7)(a): the limits for two or more motor vehicles may not be added together, combined, or stacked. § 305(8)(f) bars interpolicy stacking as the general rule.

The exceptions turn on the claimant's relationship to the vehicle. A pedestrian struck by an uninsured vehicle, and an occupant of a vehicle not owned, leased or furnished to them or to a spouse, resident parent or resident sibling, may reach one other policy. And a dependent minor whose parents live in separate households may reach up to two additional policies — one per household. Recovery may never exceed the claimant's full damages.

Primary and secondary are fixed by statute. § 305(7)(c): coverage on the vehicle occupied at the time of the accident is primary, and the coverage the claimant elected is secondary — and § 305(7)(b)(iv) provides that neither the primary nor the secondary coverage may be set off against the other.

Salvage Branding Has No Percentage Threshold

Utah's salvage brand is not defined by a percentage, and any figure you see attributed to it should be checked against the section.

§ 41-1a-1001 defines a salvage vehicle as any vehicle "(a) damaged by collision, flood, or other occurrence to the extent that the cost of repairing the vehicle for safe operation exceeds its fair market value; or (b) that has been declared a salvage vehicle by an insurer or other state or jurisdiction, but is not precluded from further registration and titling."

There is no percentage anywhere in it — not 75%, not 80%, not any figure. The test in branch (a) is an unqualified repair cost exceeds fair market value, which is effectively a 100% test. And branch (b) is a declaration branch: where an insurer declares the vehicle a salvage vehicle, that declaration is itself the trigger and no arithmetic is required.

Note also the qualifier at the end of (b) — a salvage vehicle is not precluded from further registration and titling. Salvage is a brand, not a death sentence for the title.

"Nonrepairable vehicle" is a separate and harsher brand, also defined in § 41-1a-1001: a vehicle with no resale value except as a source of parts or scrap, one that has been substantially stripped, or one that has been substantially burned. That brand does preclude return to the road.

The insurer has a hard ten-day duty. § 41-1a-1005(1)(a)(i): on declaring a vehicle a salvage vehicle and taking possession of it, the insurer must surrender the title to the Division within 10 days after settlement of the loss. The clock runs from settlement, not from the declaration or from taking possession.

And § 41-1a-1008.5 creates a private cause of action in this area — worth noting in a state whose unfair claims statute expressly creates none.

Utah Prescribes No Standard Fire Policy and Has No Valued Policy Law

Two negatives shape Utah first-party property claims, and both were established by enumerating the code rather than by failing to find something in a search.

There is no standard fire policy. All twenty parts of Title 31A Chapter 22 were enumerated: suretyship; liability insurance in general; motor vehicle; life and annuities; group life; accident and health; group accident and health; credit life and accident and health; fraternal; workers' compensation insurance contracts; legal expense; reinsurance; miscellaneous; long-term care; liability for motorboats; genetic testing; the property and casualty certificate of insurance act; portable electronics; unclaimed life; and limited long-term care. There is no property or fire insurance part. Sections 31A-21-301 through -316 were separately enumerated and contain no prescribed fire form.

The consequence is that Utah has no statutory 165-line form and no statutory suit clause of its own. Where other states prescribe a form and then measure policy language against it, Utah regulates first-party property claims almost entirely through Chapter 21's general contract provisions and R590-190.

There is no valued policy law. The same enumeration found no section requiring payment of the policy face amount on a total loss. Utah settles a total loss on the policy's own valuation terms — actual cash value or replacement cost as written — not on a statutory presumption that the face amount is the measure.

What fills the gap is § 31A-21-313 and the claims rule. Because a policy may not shorten the three-year limitations period and may not prescribe venue, the suit-clause question that a standard fire policy would normally answer is answered by statute instead — and answered more favorably to the insured than the twelve-month clause common in other states' prescribed forms.

For an adjuster this means the policy language governs the valuation and the statute governs the deadline. Do not go looking for a Utah standard form to reconcile a policy against; there is not one to find.

Utah Has a Matching Rule, and It Is More Generous Than Most Charts Suggest

R590-190-13 contains a matching requirement, and fifty-state charts that record Utah as silent on matching are wrong. The reason they are wrong is instructive: the rule is in the administrative code, and a chart compiled from statutes will not find it.

The requirement: "if a loss requires repair or replacement of items and the repaired or replaced items do not match in color, texture, or size, the insurer shall repair or replace items to conform to a reasonably uniform appearance."

Read the switch-on clause before applying it. The rule operates where a policy provides for the adjustment and settlement of first party losses based on replacement cost — the fire and extended coverage context. It is not a general actual cash value rule, and it does not convert an ACV policy into a matching obligation.

Where it applies, it is broad. The standard is a reasonably uniform appearance, and the rule reaches both interior and exterior losses — so it is not confined to siding and roofing. Incidental damage caused in the course of making the repair must be included in the loss. And the insured is responsible only for the deductible.

Actual cash value is defined but labor depreciation is not addressed. R590-190-13(2)(a) defines ACV for residential fire and extended coverage as "the replacement cost of property at the time of the loss less depreciation, if any," and imposes a duty to supply documentation itemizing the depreciation on request.

Whether labor may be depreciated is genuinely open in Utah. No statute addresses it, the rule's definition says nothing about it, and no controlling authority was located in either direction. This guide states that as an open question rather than resolving it, and any chart that gives Utah a definitive answer on labor depreciation is asserting more than the sources support.

The itemization duty is the practical point for an adjuster: whatever depreciation is applied, the insured may require it itemized, and a settlement that cannot survive an itemization request is a settlement that has a problem.

Cancellation and Nonrenewal Run on One Unified Rule

§ 31A-21-303 governs cancellation and nonrenewal across personal auto, homeowners and commercial lines together. Utah does not run separate regimes by line — it differentiates by nonpayment versus other grounds.

Cancellation for grounds other than nonpayment: 30 days. Cancellation for nonpayment: 10 days, in both personal and commercial lines. A new policy in force under 60 days: 10 days.

The commercial difference is who must be told, not how long. For commercial nonpayment the notice goes to the policyholder, each assignee, and each loss payee or mortgagee. The period is the same ten days.

Midterm cancellation is barred before the earlier of the agreed policy term or one year, except for nonpayment or the statutory grounds: material misrepresentation, a substantial change in the risk, substantial breach of contractual duties, conditions or warranties, or — for motor vehicle policies — revocation or suspension of the driver's license.

Nonrenewal requires at least 30 days before the expiration or anniversary date. A renewal premium notice must come no more than 45 and no less than 14 days before the due date. And altered terms or rates on renewal require 30 days' notice, failing which the new terms do not take effect until 30 days after notice is given — the policy renews on the old terms in the meantime.

If the notice does not state its reasons with reasonable precision, the insurer must supply them within 10 working days of a demand. Note that this is one of the few periods in the area expressed in working days rather than calendar days.

§ 31A-21-303(5) protects against single-event nonrenewal on a 36-month lookback. A personal lines policy may not be nonrenewed for a single not-at-fault accident (driver 21 or older), a single minor speeding violation of 10 mph or less over the limit (driver 21 or older), or a single wind, hail, lightning or earthquake claim that was not preventable by reasonable care — in each case where it is the only such event within 36 months. For homeowners the same protection applies to a single wind, hail or lightning claim in 36 months.

This is a per-policy rule, not a book-of-business rule. Sections 31A-21-303 and -304 were checked specifically for a percentage-of-book or block-withdrawal provision and there is none. The 36-month single-event structure is what a chart is likely to mis-describe as a book rule.

The Guaranty Association: $300,000, and No Claimant Deductible

The Utah Property and Casualty Insurance Guaranty Association pays covered claims when a member insurer becomes insolvent. Its limits are in § 31A-28-207.

The per-claim cap is $300,000. The association is obligated only as to "that amount of each covered claim that is less than $300,000."

Utah dropped the claimant deductible that the model act contains. There is no $100 deductible against covered claims in Utah. This matters because charts frequently record Utah as having one — they are describing the wrong provision.

The $100 survives, but only as a floor on unearned premium claims. § 31A-28-207(1)(c) covers unearned premium claims exceeding $100, capped at $10,000 per policy. So the hundred dollars is a threshold for a different category of claim, not a deductible applied to loss claims.

Two outer limits apply. The aggregate obligation for any one insured and its affiliates is $10,000,000 under § 31A-28-207(1)(g)(i). And an insured whose net worth exceeds $25,000,000 as of 31 December of the year before the insolvency is excluded under § 31A-28-203(4)(b)(iv).

The covered-claim definition and the net worth exclusion were amended by Chapter 45 of the 2026 General Session, effective 6 May 2026 — the same act that rebuilt the public adjuster part. The dollar caps themselves were not changed by it; they date from a 2007 act and remain at $300,000, $100 and $10,000.

For an adjuster the practical sequence on an insolvency file is: confirm the claim is a covered claim under the current § 31A-28-203 definition, check the insured against the net worth exclusion, then apply the $300,000 per-claim ceiling and the $10,000,000 aggregate.

Fraud Reporting, Immunity, and the Warning Statement Utah Does Not Require

Utah requires no fraud warning statement on claim forms or applications. Sections 31A-31-101 through 31A-31-112 were enumerated and none of them prescribes warning language. A national course that teaches a mandatory fraud legend is teaching another state's rule.

The reporting duty is 90 days and it belongs to insurers, not to adjusters personally. § 31A-31-110 requires an insurer — or, for title insurance, an auditor employed by a title insurer — to report no later than 90 days from the day the person forms a good faith belief, on the basis of a preponderance of the evidence, that a fraudulent insurance act is being, will be, or has been committed by another person.

Utah is unusually specific about the channel. The report must be in writing and submitted through the National Insurance Crime Bureau fraud reporting system, the NAIC's online fraud reporting system, or email to a department-established address. It must detail the act and the perpetrator, and state whether it was also reported to the attorney general, state law enforcement, a federal criminal investigative agency, a district attorney, or a municipal or county prosecutor.

Immunity is broad and it is conditioned on good faith. § 31A-31-105 immunizes a person from civil action, civil penalty or damages for cooperating with, furnishing evidence to, providing information to, or receiving information from the Department, a government anti-fraud agency, or a nonprofit anti-fraud organization — and for submitting a § 31A-31-110 report. Insurer-to-insurer information sharing in a good faith effort to detect or prevent fraud is separately immunized. The immunity does not extend to a person who committed the fraudulent act.

The civil exposure is treble and does not require a conviction. § 31A-31-109 mandates full restitution and the costs of enforcement — including investigators, attorneys and other public employees — and permits a discretionary civil penalty of up to three times the value improperly sought or received. A criminal action is not a prerequisite to civil liability.

Insurers must maintain an antifraud plan under § 31A-31-112, which the commissioner may investigate and examine.

One point of terminology. Chapter 31 does not charter an "Insurance Fraud Division." What it creates is funding and enforcement machinery administered by the commissioner — including the Insurance Fraud Investigation Restricted Account under § 31A-31-108, funded by a tiered annual insurer assessment. The Department operates a fraud unit administratively. Teach the powers rather than the box, and note that the statutory definition of "insurance fraud provisions" reaches beyond Title 31A into workers' compensation fraud and the criminal insurance fraud statute.

Workers' Compensation: Rates Reset Every July and Key to the Date of Injury

An adjuster handling Utah workers' compensation claims needs the workers' compensation classification on the adjuster license. There is no separate comp adjuster credential, and the property and casualty classification does not cover comp.

Benefit rates reset every 1 July and are published by the Utah Labor Commission. For injuries occurring 1 July 2026 through 30 June 2027, the state average weekly wage is $1,376.00 and the maximum weekly temporary total disability rate is $1,376.00 — Utah caps TTD at 100% of the state average weekly wage, which is higher than most states' two-thirds cap.

The minimum is $45.00 per week, plus $20.00 for a dependent spouse and $20.00 for each dependent child under 18, up to a maximum of four children. The other current maximums are $917.00 per week for permanent partial disability and $1,169.00 per week for permanent total disability and for death benefits.

The rates key to the date of injury, and this is statutory rather than administrative. § 34A-2-410(1)(a) computes temporary total disability at 66 and two-thirds percent of the employee's average weekly wage "at the time of the injury," capped at 100% of the state average weekly wage "at the time of the injury." An adjuster working a 2025 injury applies the schedule in force for that year, not the current one.

The waiting period is three days, and compensation becomes retroactive to day one if the total temporary disability extends beyond 14 days under § 34A-2-408. Medical benefits are not subject to the waiting period at all.

Notice of injury to the employer is 180 days under § 34A-2-407(3)(b)(i).

Claim filing has two prongs and is frequently mis-charted as a single deadline. § 34A-2-417(2)(a) requires an application for hearing with the Division of Adjudication no later than 6 years from the date of the accident — and separately provides that by no later than 12 years from the date of the accident the employee must be able to meet the burden of proof. Both prongs are live; reporting only the six years understates the exposure window.

One deliberate gap. No accept-or-deny deadline for the comp insurer was located in Title 34A Chapter 2. Utah's comp claim-handling timeframes appear to sit with the Labor Commission by rule rather than in the statute, and this guide does not publish a number it could not source. Confirm the current rule before relying on a comp decision deadline.

Reading Utah Law Without Getting Burned

Utah publishes its law well, but the mechanics have traps that will silently hand you the wrong text. This section is the one to read before you verify anything in this guide for yourself.

The code site is a JavaScript application. Automated retrieval of a Utah Code section page returns navigation and no statutory text at all. The same content is available as static XML, PDF and RTF from the Download Options links printed on every section page, and the chapter-level XML carries the whole chapter including every section's history line.

Read the effective-date stamp in the heading. Every Utah Code section page prints its currency directly — for example, `Section 402 Compensation. (Effective 5/6/2026)` — and prints the history line at the foot of the section. Those two together are the currency signal. A version-stamped URL can silently serve a superseded version of a section without any warning that it has done so, so trust the stamp on the page rather than the link that got you there.

Free codifications run about a year behind, and on this chapter that gap is decisive. The widely used commercial reproduction of the Utah Code is currently the 2025 code — its § 31A-26-402 shows the pre-2026 text and contains no public adjuster compensation cap at all. Anything touching Part 4, § 31A-26-301, § 31A-22-309 or § 31A-28-203 must come from the state's own publisher.

Utah holds special sessions, and they change insurance law. The adjuster definitions section was amended in a 2025 special session, which inserted a new subsection and renumbered everything after it. A review keyed only to general sessions will miss that kind of change entirely.

An omnibus act reaches outside its obvious chapter. Chapter 45 of the 2026 General Session is the public adjuster act — and it also amended the PIP statute and the guaranty association covered-claim definition. Scoping a currency check to Chapter 26 would have missed both.

And an agency's own legislative summary describes the bill, not the code. The Department's 2026 summary page states the non-catastrophic public adjuster compensation cap as fifteen percent; the enacted statute says twenty. The summary reflects the bill as introduced and was not reconciled against the enrolled act. Where a number matters, read the codified section — the regulator's summary of its own session is not a substitute for it.

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