North Carolina Property & Casualty Exam Day: What to Expect at Pearson VUE (2026)

Your North Carolina Property or Casualty exam is delivered by Pearson VUE. Each exam has 55 scored questions plus up to 5 unscored pretest questions, and a 75-minute (1 hour 15 minutes) time limit. The two parts are scored together. You need a scaled score of 70 on a 0-100 scale. The exam fee is $45, and the exam is in English only.

Registration steps, acceptable identification, arrival time and what you may bring into the room are set by NCDOI and Pearson VUE in the candidate guide (number 123400, October 2025). This page does not restate those rules, because they are the part most likely to change. Read the candidate guide and your own confirmation before exam day, and follow them over anything else you read, including this page.

The P&C license needs two exams, the Property Agent (code 04) and the Casualty Agent (code 05). Confirm the one on your appointment. The outlines share a 7-item Terms and Concepts section, then diverge: Property is 25 items of personal coverages, 10 commercial and 13 North Carolina statutes; Casualty is 18 personal, 15 commercial and 15 statutes.

You have 75 minutes for the whole sitting. Because up to five items are unscored pretest questions that look exactly like scored ones, treat every question the same. Do not spend long on a question you suspect is a pretest item, because you cannot know.

A practical pacing method: answer what you know on the first pass, mark the questions that need a calculation or a long scenario, and return to them. Coinsurance, deductible and limit problems are quick once you have set them up the same way every time, and slow if you improvise.

Read the stem for the key words before the options: NOT, EXCEPT, BEST, FIRST. A reading error costs the same as a knowledge gap.

The exam is offered in English only. Candidates for whom English is a second language may receive time and a half when they supply a letter. Arrange that before you book, not on the day.

Your result is a scaled score on a 0-100 scale, and 70 is passing. It is not a percentage of questions correct. If you do not reach 70, you can retake after a 24-hour wait and a new $45 fee. See the retake rules.

After a pass, the licensing steps remain: $50 registration per line of authority, $44 application processing, $38 fingerprints and a $5 NIPR fee. For Property and Casualty on one application that is $187 before exam fees, and $277 with two exam attempts at $45.

Calculation questions. Write down the limit, the deductible, the coinsurance requirement and the settlement basis before you touch the arithmetic. Most wrong answers are the right arithmetic applied in the wrong order.

Statute questions. Tie each article to its subject: Article 36 to the Rate Bureau, Article 44 to fire policies, Article 45 to the Beach Plan, Article 46 to the FAIR Plan, Article 37 to the Motor Vehicle Reinsurance Facility. When two options both sound legal, choose the one that matches the subject of the article named in the question.

Scenario questions. Identify who the question is about, what policy or form applies and what the question actually asks. Many options are true statements that answer a different question.

Do a final pass on the North Carolina law section, because it is the part candidates tend to under-prepare: the Rate Bureau, Articles 44 to 46 and 48 for Property; the Motor Vehicle Reinsurance Facility, G.S. 20-310 and Chapter 97 for Casualty. Do two or three worked calculation problems. Then stop.

To rehearse, try the free practice questions, read how hard the exams really are, and see the course preview.