Is the North Carolina Property & Casualty Exam Hard? Pass Rates and Difficulty (2026)

The North Carolina Property & Casualty license takes two separate exams: the Property Agent exam (code 04) and the Casualty Agent exam (code 05). No combined exam exists. Neither is easy. In the NAIC compiled figures for English-language, first-time candidates, 49% passed the Property exam in 2025 and 53% passed the Casualty exam. In 2024 the figures were 48.9% and 54.1%.

Those numbers describe roughly 4,300 first-time P&C candidates a year. They say that a first-time Property candidate is slightly less likely to pass than to fail, and that Property is the weakest of North Carolina's licensing lines. They do not say the material is beyond a prepared person. They say that a large share of candidates arrive underprepared.

These are NAIC compiled pass rates for first-time, English-language candidates. LanePrep quotes them as 49% for Property and 53-54% for Casualty. The two years are close to each other, which makes the pattern stable rather than a one-year accident.

The format is short but dense. Each exam has 55 scored questions plus up to 5 unscored pretest questions, and you have 1 hour 15 minutes for the whole sitting. The two parts are scored together. You cannot tell which items are pretest, so every question has to be treated as if it counts.

The passing standard is a scaled score. You need a scaled score of 70 on a 0-100 scale. A scaled score is not a simple percentage of answers correct, and the outline does not publish a fixed number of correct answers, so there is no safe margin to count on.

Personal lines carry the most weight. On the Property exam, Section II (Personal Insurance Coverages) is 25 of the 55 scored items. On the Casualty exam it is 18, and Commercial Insurance Coverages grows to 15. You need a real command of homeowners and dwelling forms for Property, and of personal auto, commercial auto, general liability and workers' compensation for Casualty.

North Carolina law is a graded section, not a footnote. Section IV is 13 items on Property and 15 on Casualty. It draws on the Rate Bureau, the Beach Plan and the FAIR Plan for property, and on the Motor Vehicle Reinsurance Facility, G.S. 20-310 and the Workers' Compensation Act (Chapter 97) for casualty. National textbooks barely touch this material.

The published figures do not break results down by study method, so what follows is what the structure of the exams makes likely, not a statistic.

Candidates who study the national concepts and skip the state law. Section IV is 13 items on Property and 15 on Casualty, and it asks for specific statutes and institutions by name.

Candidates who prepare for one exam and sit the other. The Property and Casualty outlines share a Terms and Concepts section of 7 items and then diverge. Casualty candidates who study only homeowners forms, or Property candidates who ignore the Beach Plan and the FAIR Plan, lose items they should have had.

Candidates who rush the arithmetic. Coinsurance, deductibles applied to limits, and umbrella retentions are all worked problems. They reward practice on paper, not reading.

Candidates who retake quickly with the same method. The wait between attempts is only 24 hours, and each attempt costs $45. A short wait invites a second sitting before the weak section has actually been repaired.

Treat the two exams as two plans. Decide which one you sit first, learn its outline weights, and spend your time in proportion: for Property, personal coverages and the property statutes; for Casualty, a balance across personal, commercial and the casualty statutes.

Do the state law early, not last. Then drill with questions that make you apply a rule, not recognise one. LanePrep's North Carolina P&C practice sets cover the chapters from personal property through casualty law, and each answer explains why the wrong options are wrong. Start with the free practice question hub, read how to pass on the first try, and see the exam format and weights.

If you want to hear the material while commuting and then test yourself, the course preview shows how the audio lessons and quizzes fit together.