What is on the Texas property and casualty exam

Short version

145 questions, 150 minutes, 130 of them scored, and you need 70 percent — 91 of those 130 — to pass. Six sections are general property and casualty knowledge and two are Texas law. A new content outline takes effect on 1 September 2026: the section weights do not change, but the statutes behind the two Texas sections were rewritten.

Texas licenses property and casualty agents through a single General Lines — Property and Casualty exam, delivered by Pearson VUE. Most candidates walk in knowing the pass mark and almost nothing else about the structure, which is a shame, because the structure is published, it is specific, and it tells you exactly where your study time is worth the most.

Everything below comes from the official Pearson VUE Texas Insurance Content Outlines, document #124401, and specifically the half headed "on or after September 1, 2026".

The shape of the exam

The gap between 145 and 130 is the part that surprises people. Fifteen of the questions you answer are pretest items — unscored questions the vendor is trialling for future exams. They are not marked, they are not identified, and they are mixed in with everything else. You cannot tell which is which, so the only workable strategy is to treat all 145 as real.

The practical effect is on pacing, not on scoring. 150 minutes across 145 items is about 62 seconds each. That is comfortable for a definition and tight for a coinsurance calculation, so the habit worth building before exam day is flagging and moving on rather than sitting on a hard item.

Seventy percent of 130 scored questions means 91 correct answers. Nine wrong in a row costs you nothing if the rest are right; there is no section you must pass individually.

The eight sections, and what each is worth

The exam is delivered in two parts. General Knowledge carries 100 scored questions across six sections, and Agent State Specific carries 30 across two. Weights below are each section's share of the 130 scored questions.

Two things fall out of that table immediately.

The two "types of policies" sections are 45 questions between them — over a third of the scored exam. Sections 1 and 4 are the largest on the paper by a wide margin, and they are the most concrete: they ask what a particular form covers, not what a term means.

Texas law is 30 questions, nearly a quarter of the exam. That is more than any single general-knowledge section, and it is the part a national study guide cannot teach you. Candidates who fail narrowly very often fail here.

Sections 1 to 3: property

Section 1 covers homeowners, dwelling policies, commercial lines, inland marine, the National Flood Insurance Program, and a catch-all "others". Inland marine is worth a note because the Texas administrative definition of it lives at 28 TAC Section 5.5008, "Inland Marine Insurance — Other Inland Marine Risks", which lists the classes of risk that qualify — contractors' equipment among them.

Section 2 is vocabulary, and it is the section people underestimate. Insurable interest, proximate cause, indemnity, coinsurance and insurance to value, occurrence, vacancy and unoccupancy, blanket versus specific. Fifteen questions is a lot to lose to definitions you half-know.

Section 3 is the anatomy of a policy — declarations, insuring agreement, conditions, exclusions — plus contract law: elements of a contract, warranties, representations and concealment. It also reaches two federal statutes that show up on the paper: the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which governs the underwriting information you may pull, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act's privacy provisions. The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act appears here and again in section 6.

Sections 4 to 6: casualty

Section 4 is the single largest section on the exam at 23 questions, and the broadest: commercial general liability, personal and business auto, workers compensation and employers liability, crime, bonds, professional liability, umbrella and excess, and the Business Owners Policy.

Section 5 repeats several section 2 concepts on the casualty side, and adds the ones that only make sense for liability coverage — damages, negligence, certificates of insurance, deposit premium and audit, law of large numbers, pure versus speculative risk.

Section 6 is casualty policy provisions, and the two items worth memorising are supplementary payments and consent to settle, both of which are the kind of specific provision a well-written question turns on.

Sections 7 and 8: the Texas half

This is where the exam stops being transferable.

Section 7, Texas Statutes and Rules Common to Property and Casualty Insurance (18 questions) covers the Commissioner of Insurance, insurance definitions, licensing requirements, marketing practices, and agent duties and responsibilities. The outline's own reference list points at the Texas Insurance Code provisions establishing the Department and the Commissioner's authority (TIC Sections 31.001, 31.002 and 31.021), the unfair methods of competition provisions at TIC Sections 541.107 and 541.108, claim settlement at TIC Section 542.010, and the agent definitions at TIC Section 4001.005.

The licensing subtopic is the most heavily referenced part of the whole state outline. The current version points at TIC Sections 4001.201 through 4001.206 and 4001.252 and 4001.255 on applying for and issuing a licence, 4003.001, 4004.051 through 4004.055 on grounds for discipline, and 4005.101 and 4005.102 on enforcement.

Section 8, Texas Statutes and Rules Pertinent to Property and Casualty Insurance (12 questions) is the line-specific half: property and casualty definitions, surplus lines (TIC Chapter 981), approval of rates and forms, homeowner's insurance, automobile insurance, workers' compensation, the Texas Property and Casualty Insurance Guaranty Association (TIC Chapter 462), and the Texas Medical Liability Insurance Underwriting Association, usually called the JUA (TIC Chapter 2203).

One Texas peculiarity is worth knowing cold because it is genuinely unusual and it makes for an easy question: Texas does not require most private employers to carry workers' compensation insurance. Coverage is elective, under Texas Labor Code Section 406.002, and an employer who opts out — a "nonsubscriber" — gives up the common-law defences the Act would otherwise provide. Workers' compensation in Texas sits in the Labor Code rather than the Insurance Code, which is itself a distinction the exam can test.

The outline changed on 1 September 2026

Pearson VUE publishes both halves in one document: outlines for exams taken before 1 September 2026, and outlines for exams taken on or after that date. If you are sitting the exam from September onward, the second half is the one that governs your paper.

Here is the useful part, and it runs against what you would assume from the words "new outline":

• Every section weight is identical. All eight scored counts are the same in both halves. So is every subtopic. If you have been studying to the old outline, your allocation of effort is still correct.
• What changed is the statutory reference lists behind the two Texas sections. The agent-duties subtopic dropped several older references and picked up others, including claim settlement at TIC Section 542.010. The licensing subtopic gained a much more granular set of Insurance Code sections than it previously carried, and dropped TIC Section 4001.105.

In other words: the syllabus did not move, but the law the state section points at was re-cut, and it points harder at licensing and claim handling than it used to. If your study material predates this change, sections 7 and 8 are the parts to re-check.

What to do with this

Three things, in order of return on effort.

1. Do not treat the Texas sections as an afterthought. They are 30 of 130 scored questions, they are the part general study material covers worst, and they are pure recall — which means they are the most reliably winnable questions on the exam.
2. Spend the largest block of time on sections 1 and 4. Forty-five scored questions between them, and they reward knowing what specific forms cover rather than understanding concepts in general.
3. Practise against the timer, not just the material. Sixty-two seconds an item is fine until you meet three calculations in a row. Knowing when to flag and move on is worth several questions on its own.

Every question in our Texas bank is tagged to one of the eight sections above and cited to the statute or form it comes from, so you can see which section you are actually weak in rather than guessing.

Sources

• Pearson VUE, Texas Insurance Content Outlines, document #124401, the section headed "on or after September 1, 2026" — the source of every section, subtopic and scored count above.
• Pearson VUE, Texas Insurance Licensing Candidate Handbook, document #124400, for the 150 minute limit and the 49 dollar fee, verified 28 July 2026.
• Texas Insurance Code and Texas Administrative Code sections as cited inline.