Wyoming Personal Lines Study Guide

Wyoming issues a Personal Lines Only licence — noncommercial property and casualty, exam code 55 — even though Pearson VUE publishes no content outline for it. That makes the statutes and rules themselves the whole of your state-section syllabus, which is a good reason to work through this chapter carefully rather than trusting a topic list.

Chapter 35 has two articles, and they do different jobs

This is the structural point that organises everything else. Article 1 of Title 26 chapter 35 is procedural and reaches every property and casualty termination: the manner of providing notice (W.S. 26-35-101), the refund of unearned premium on cancellation (-102), prohibited practices (-103), penalties (-104), issuance or renewal with exclusions (-105), and transfers resulting from mergers, acquisitions or restructuring (-106).

Article 2 carries the substance — scope, mid-term cancellation, nonrenewal and renewal with altered terms. The Property guide covers article 2’s grounds and day counts. What a personal-lines producer operates inside day to day is article 1.

One rule in article 1 runs against the grain of all the others. W.S. 26-35-106 provides that where a policy transfer results from a merger, acquisition or restructuring, or where it results in broader coverage, notice is not required. Almost every other provision in the chapter adds a notice duty; this one removes it.

What a reason has to look like, and when notice is excused

A nonrenewal notice must state the precise reason, follow the article 1 notice procedures, and — the sanction that gives it force — “any nonrenewal attempted which is not in compliance with this section is ineffective.” An insurer is protected from liability for reasons stated in good faith.

There is a second notice duty on the auto side that personal-lines producers meet constantly. Under the Commissioner’s rule §14-6, an insurer cancelling or nonrenewing an automobile liability policy must notify the policyholder of possible eligibility for automobile insurance through the assigned risk plan — the rule names it disjunctively, “the automobile assigned risk plan or Wyoming automobile insurance plan” — with an exception for nonpayment-of-premium situations. Property has no equivalent, because Wyoming has no property FAIR plan.

Two rules that reach inside the policy

Fellow-employee coverage cannot be excluded. Rule §24-5 prohibits a private passenger automobile policy providing bodily injury liability from excluding the named insured from coverage for bodily injury to a fellow employee injured in the course of such employment in “a business other than the automobile business”, arising from use of the owned motor vehicle or a non-owned private passenger or utility automobile. The policy may exclude injuries required to be compensated under workers’ compensation law.

That is a genuinely Wyoming-specific coverage mandate, and the two qualifiers are where the exam lives: the business must be one other than the automobile business — that is the rule’s own wording, not a paraphrase — and the workers’ compensation carve-out is permitted.

Physical damage claims get exactly three settlement options. Rule §30-4: “Insurers shall adjust personal property losses, be it first or third party claims, by utilizing one of the following options: (a) Pay for the loss in its entirety in money, based on an appraisal of the damage sustained by insured’s vehicle. (b) Repair the damaged property. (c) Replace the damaged property.”

Notice what the rule does not contain: no total-loss formula, no salvage procedure and no percentage threshold. Wyoming’s salvage percentage lives in the motor vehicle title statute instead, and even there it applies only where no insurer is involved in the settlement.

Three more Wyoming-specific instruments

Collision deductibles and subrogation have their own statute at W.S. 26-13-113, covering the deductible amount of collision coverage, subrogation, and the insured’s right to the deductible.

After-market parts are governed by a dedicated regulation, 044-2 Wyo. Code R. chapter 19.

Dwelling roofs get their own rule too — chapter 26, governing the adjustment of damages to dwelling roofs under homeowners’ policies. In a state with Wyoming’s hail and wind exposure that is not a footnote, and it is the kind of instrument a personal-lines producer is asked about by clients long before they are asked about anything in the code.

Wyoming also maintains chapter 39, disclosure requirements for replacement cost and actual cash value policies — the distinction that generates more homeowner disputes than any other.