Do You Need a Pre-Licensing Course for the California Property & Casualty Exam? (2026)

No. Since 2026-01-01, the 20 hours of pre-licensing education are no longer a licensing requirement for property, casualty, commercial lines, personal lines and limited lines automobile applicants. The CDI Curriculum Board minutes of 2026-02-19 record this, citing AB 943 (Rodriguez, Chapter 566, Statutes of 2025), signed on 2025-10-10. The CDI published a notice about the change on 2025-11-10.

Dropping pre-licensing does not mean a license is automatic. You still have to:

• Pass the exam. The combined Property and Casualty exam has 150 scored questions, a 195-minute time limit and a 60% raw pass mark.
• Pay the exam fee: a $55 CDI exam fee plus a $43 PSI convenience fee.
• Complete fingerprints: Live Scan, $74.
• Apply to the CDI through Sircon and pay the license filing fee, $188 for a two-year term.
• Complete the 12-hour ethics and California Insurance Code course (section 1749(a)(1)), which includes one hour on insurance fraud.

The 12-hour ethics and California Insurance Code course must be completed before the license is issued. It is not a condition for sitting the exam. Many candidates choose to finish it after they pass, once they know the result.

With no pre-licensing hours to complete first, you can go straight to exam preparation and book as soon as you are ready. The order that makes sense is: study, sit the exam, then handle fingerprints, the application and the ethics course while your passing result is still valid. A passed exam stays valid for one year (section 1676(a)), so the later steps should not be left to drift.

Because no combined objectives document exists, the Property and the Casualty License Examination Objectives are the documents to study from, and the combined exam draws from both.

The CDI renamed its "Educational Objectives" as "License Examination Objectives". They describe what the exam covers for Property and for Casualty. A subcommittee was revising them in early 2026, so check the CDI page for the current version before you build a study plan.

LanePrep is exam preparation, not a state-mandated course. It does not satisfy any licensing requirement and does not replace the ethics course. What it does is help you pass the exam: audio chapters you can listen to while commuting, and practice questions with explanations that follow the structure of the California objectives.

That is worth having because the published 2025 first-time pass rate for the combined exam was 57%, and with the pre-licensing requirement gone, structured study is up to you. Read how hard the exam is for the full numbers.

Check the details in the exam format guide and the cost guide, then try the course preview. When you are ready to drill by topic, use the sets on the free practice questions hub.