What This License Is
The Wisconsin personal lines line of authority covers property and casualty insurance sold to individuals and families for personal, non-commercial purposes — homeowners, dwelling fire, renters, personal auto, personal umbrella and the endorsements around them. It is issued by the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance.
In most states Personal Lines is a consolation prize: a narrower authority you take because the combined Property and Casualty exam looked daunting. In Wisconsin it is a genuinely efficient purchase, because Wisconsin does not sell a combined P&C exam at all. Property (22-05) and Casualty (22-07) are separate 100-question exams at $75 each with separate $75 license fees. Personal Lines is one 100-question exam at $75 with one license fee — and it covers the personal slice of both.
The boundary is commercial business. Personal Lines will not let you quote a commercial general liability policy or a commercial property schedule. If your desk is personal auto and homeowners for the foreseeable future, 22-09 gets you there for half the money and half the seat time. If a small-commercial account is going to land on you within a year, take Property and Casualty and absorb the extra cost.
Exam Options & Format
The Personal Lines exam is PSI Series 22-09, "Wisconsin Personal Lines: General and State" — 100 scored questions plus 5 to 10 unscored pretest items, 2 hours, $75. It is the same length and the same price as every other Wisconsin major-line exam; what differs is breadth, not difficulty.
Series 22-10 is the 35-question, 1-hour state-specific variant, for an applicant who previously held the Wisconsin personal lines license. (A filing quirk worth knowing if you go looking for the content outline: PSI's file for the 22-10 outline is confusingly named after 22-09. Check the series code printed inside the document, not the filename.)
Wisconsin law is embedded in the same 100 questions rather than examined separately — the "General and State" naming is literal. Given how much of Wisconsin's personal-lines law lives in one statute, that is a good deal of concentrated state content for a single exam.
The fee is per attempt, non-transferable, and valid one year from payment. Attempts are unlimited, there is no waiting period, and you cannot rebook on the day you tested.
Most Tested Topics on the Wisconsin Personal Lines Exam
Almost all of Wisconsin's personal-lines state content lives in a single statute — §631.36, on cancellation, nonrenewal and renewal — and it is worth learning as one system rather than as a list of day counts. From the TESTivity Wisconsin regulations curriculum, statute-verified:
| Wisconsin personal lines concept | The rule, and where it comes from |
|---|---|
| The first 60 days on a new policy | Paragraphs (a) and (b) do not apply to a policy that has not been previously renewed and has been in effect less than 60 days. Both the permissible-grounds list and the 10-day notice requirement fall away — OCI: the insurer may cancel "at any time within the first 59 days without providing you a reason" (§631.36(2)(c)) |
| Midterm cancellation, permissible grounds | Only failure to pay a premium when due, or a policy ground within four classes: material misrepresentation; substantial change in the risk assumed; substantial breaches of contractual duties, conditions or warranties; attainment of the terminal age for coverage (§631.36(2)(a)) |
| Terminal-age cancellation | Requires notice accompanied by a tender of a proportional return of premium (§631.36(2)(a)4.) |
| Midterm cancellation notice | At least 10 days after first-class mailing or delivery of a written notice (§631.36(2)(b)) |
| Nonrenewal notice | At least 60 days before the expiration date (§631.36(4)(a)) |
| Notice that the renewal premium is due | A window, not a deadline: not more than 75 days nor less than 10 days before the due date (§631.36(4)) |
| Anniversary cancellation | At least 60 days before the anniversary date (§631.36(5)(c)) |
| Renewal on altered terms, general | At least 60 days before the renewal date (§631.36(5)) |
| Renewal on altered terms, personal lines P&C | 45 days — the shorter period, and the one that applies to this license (§631.36(5)(a)2., and (5)(c)2. for an anniversary alteration) |
| Reason requirement | A notice "shall state with reasonable precision the facts on which the insurer's decision is based" — and the sentence that follows is the teeth: "No such notice is effective unless it so states the facts" (§631.36(6)) |
| When the reason rule switches off | Subsections (6) and (7) do not apply where the ground is nonpayment of premium and the notice says so (§631.36(8)) |
| Defective notice | Coverage continues on the prior policy's terms and premium for the policy term or one year, whichever is less (OCI PI-024) |
| Residual-market referral | The notice must contain adequate instructions for applying through a ch. 619 risk-sharing plan where one exists for that coverage — the Wisconsin Automobile Insurance Plan for auto, the Wisconsin Insurance Plan for property (§631.36(7)(a)) |
The 60-day rule is the one candidates get half right. Most will remember that new policies get special treatment. Fewer will remember how special: §631.36(2)(c) disapplies both paragraph (a), which limits the grounds, and paragraph (b), which imposes the 10-day notice. Inside the first 60 days an insurer needs neither a statutory ground nor a notice period. A question offering "in the first 60 days the insurer may cancel for any reason on 10 days' notice" is a well-built distractor, because it is half true.
Then Wisconsin swings hard the other way. Once you are past 60 days, the grounds narrow to four named classes plus nonpayment, and §631.36(6) demands the notice "state with reasonable precision the facts" behind the decision. Not a category, not boilerplate — facts. And the sanction for getting it wrong is unusual: a defective notice does not merely delay the termination, it keeps the coverage alive on the old terms and old premium for the policy term or a year, whichever is shorter. Wisconsin makes sloppy notices expensive.
The day counts are best memorized as a shape rather than a list. Ten days is the short notice, and it appears twice — midterm cancellation, and the floor of the renewal-premium window. Sixty days is the long notice, and it appears three times — nonrenewal, anniversary cancellation, and general altered-terms renewal. Forty-five days is the personal-lines exception, and it is the only number on this table that exists specifically for the license you are taking.
Results, Retakes and the 180-Day Clock
You find out immediately. Your score appears on screen the moment you finish, and PSI emails a score report.
The report is a study tool if you failed. The emailed report includes a diagnostic breakdown of strengths and weaknesses by exam type — worth reading properly before rebooking, because on a 100-question exam a single weak content area is usually the whole gap.
Wisconsin reports a raw percentage, not a scaled score. This is worth dwelling on, because it inverts what most national prep teaches. The standard boilerplate is that your score is scaled and is "neither the number nor the percentage of questions answered correctly." Wisconsin's bulletin says the opposite in one flat sentence: "You must get 70% correct to pass the examination." On a 100-question exam that means 70 questions. The arithmetic behaves exactly the way you would naively expect it to, and a candidate who has internalised the scaled-score line will mis-plan their practice target.
If you don't pass: re-register and pay $75 again. There is no attempt limit — PSI states it directly: "there is no limit to the number of times a candidate may retake an examination if necessary, to pass." There is also no mandatory waiting period, with one practical constraint: "it is not possible to make a new examination appointment on the same day you have taken an examination." The bulletin's own example is a candidate who fails on a Wednesday, calls Thursday, and retests Friday if a seat is free.
If you pass, two things have to happen in order. First, wait 48 to 72 hours. Your score has to post to NIPR before the application system will take you, and OCI puts that lag at two to three days. Filing the same afternoon simply fails.
Second, apply within 180 days. Wis. Admin. Code Ins 6.59 is unambiguous: "Examination scores are valid for 180 days. Failure to apply for a license within 180 days will require candidate to re-take the examination." OCI says the same thing as "exam scores are only valid for six months." There is no extension.
One more number in the same family, easy to confuse with the score clock: your paid exam fee is valid one year from the date of payment, and is non-transferable. That is a different clock from the 180-day score validity, and it runs from a different event.
What It Costs
$75 to PSI for Series 22-09, $34.75 to Fieldprint, $75 to OCI for the personal lines line of authority and a one-time $10 resident application fee — about $195 on a first pass, plus pre-licensing tuition.
Set that against the alternative, because in Wisconsin the comparison is unusually stark. Property plus Casualty is two exams at $75 and two license fees at $75 — $300 against Personal Lines' $150 for the same two components. The $10 application fee and the $34.75 fingerprint fee are charged once either way. You are buying access to the commercial market for about $150, and if you are never going to use it, that is $150 of nothing.
Retakes are the full $75. There is no attempt limit, so the discipline has to come from the diagnostic report rather than from the rules.
Eligibility Requirements
At least 18, with the operative standard at Wis. Stat. §628.04: the commissioner must find the applicant "is competent and trustworthy" and intends in good faith to act as an intermediary.
Personal Lines is a major line, so 20 hours of pre-licensing education are required — 12 if you completed the 8-hour general block for another major line within the past 12 months — and the certificate of completion must be presented at the test center. Fingerprints through Fieldprint are required as well.
§628.10 allows revocation for false statements in an application. Answer the uniform application's background questions completely and attach documentation up front.
Keeping Your License Active
Important CE details: A narrower line of authority does not mean a lighter cycle — personal lines producers carry the same 24 hours as anyone else, with the same 3 ethics hours.
A narrower license buys no relief. Personal Lines producers carry the same 24 credit hours biennially with 3 in ethics (Ins 28.04) as a full property-and-casualty producer, on a license expiring the last day of your birth month.
Wisconsin allocates none of the 24 by line, so you may earn every credit in life or health coursework if that is what is available. Excess hours do not carry forward, and credits must be banked by the provider before expiration. The Property & Casualty guide covers the full renewal and reinstatement machinery.
Quick Reference
Official Links
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