This guide covers Pennsylvania’s Resident Public Adjuster license: the Public Adjuster Law at 63 P.S. 1601 to 1608 and 31 Pa. Code Chapter 115, PSI’s Series 16-19 examination of 60 items in 80 minutes at a 70% passing standard, the outline weights led by Property and Casualty Insurance Basics at 19%, fingerprinting, the $200 application fee, and the $20,000 bond. It follows the PSI booklet and the Department’s materials. PassProfessor’s companion program is in the works.
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This guide follows the two documents that govern the license: the Public Adjuster Law in Title 63 and its regulation at 31 Pa. Code Chapter 115, and PSI’s Series 16-19 booklet and outline. It takes the licensing route in the order a candidate lives it, works all ten outline areas in weight order, and closes with the practice law of the Commonwealth — the bond, the rescission right, and the two-year renewal with its continuing education — because in Pennsylvania those are not footnotes to the license; they are its operating conditions.
The companion program is in the works, built on the same primary documents this guide follows. Join the notify list and you will be emailed when enrollment opens. Until then, this guide gives preparation a structure worth starting now, because a licensing examination is never only an examination: in Pennsylvania it sits inside a route — eligibility, the sitting, and the application file — and candidates who understand the whole route prepare for the sitting itself with better judgement about what matters.
The license at a glance
| Fact of record | Detail |
|---|---|
| License | Resident Public Adjuster, under the Public Adjuster Law, 63 P.S. 1601 to 1608 (as amended by Act 21 of 2012), and 31 Pa. Code Chapter 115 |
| Regulator | Pennsylvania Insurance Department |
| Examination | Pennsylvania Public Insurance Adjuster Examination, Series 16-19, administered by PSI Services LLC |
| Format | 60 items; 80 minutes; computer-based. PSI may add 5 to 10 unscored experimental items |
| Passing standard | 70%, per the PSI candidate booklet for this examination |
| Pre-licensing course | None required |
| Application fee | $200 (third-party state fee, paid with the online application) |
| Surety bond | $20,000, filed before the licensee takes a first client |
| Fingerprinting and renewal | IdentoGO fingerprinting; renewal every two years with 24 hours of continuing education; a client may rescind a public adjuster contract within 3 calendar days |
Reading the verified facts
A fact table compresses; this section decompresses the lines a candidate is most likely to misread, skip, or confuse with a neighbouring license’s facts. Each line below restates one row of the table and adds what the row means in practice.
License. Resident Public Adjuster, under the Public Adjuster Law, 63 P.S. 1601 to 1608 (as amended by Act 21 of 2012), and 31 Pa. Code Chapter 115. Candidates should verify this line against the regulator’s current page at application time; licensing facts of this kind are the ones regulators amend between bulletin editions.
Regulator. Pennsylvania Insurance Department. This is one of the facts that distinguishes this license from its neighbours in the same state, and it is worth stating to any adviser, employer, or bond agent in exactly these terms.
Examination. Pennsylvania Public Insurance Adjuster Examination, Series 16-19, administered by PSI Services LLC. In preparation terms, this fact earns its place in the study plan rather than only in the application plan: material attached to it is examinable in the state-law and regulation content of the outline.
Format. 60 items; 80 minutes; computer-based. PSI may add 5 to 10 unscored experimental items. Keep the documentary evidence for this line with the application file from the beginning of preparation; assembling it after a pass is the commonest avoidable delay in this route.
Passing standard. 70%, per the PSI candidate booklet for this examination. Where a figure appears in this line, it is a third-party figure — a fee or filing owed to the state or the vendor — and it is printed because candidates budget a licensing route better when its third-party costs are visible in one place.
Pre-licensing course. None required. For the candidate, the practical consequence is sequencing: this fact belongs at the start of the plan, not in its footnotes, because later steps assume it has been settled.
Application fee. $200 (third-party state fee, paid with the online application). Candidates should verify this line against the regulator’s current page at application time; licensing facts of this kind are the ones regulators amend between bulletin editions.
Surety bond. $20,000, filed before the licensee takes a first client. This is one of the facts that distinguishes this license from its neighbours in the same state, and it is worth stating to any adviser, employer, or bond agent in exactly these terms.
Fingerprinting and renewal. IdentoGO fingerprinting; renewal every two years with 24 hours of continuing education; a client may rescind a public adjuster contract within 3 calendar days. In preparation terms, this fact earns its place in the study plan rather than only in the application plan: material attached to it is examinable in the state-law and regulation content of the outline.
The licensing route, step by step
Step 1 — Confirm the examination the Law requires
31 Pa. Code 115.11 requires applicants to pass an examination, and 63 P.S. 1602.1(a)(3) asks the application to document that the applicant passed it or is exempt from it. The examination is PSI’s Series 16-19, titled the Pennsylvania Public Insurance Adjuster Examination. No pre-licensing course is required before it — the statute’s gate is the examination itself.
Step 2 — Sit Series 16-19
The series carries 60 items in 80 minutes, with a 70% passing standard under the PSI candidate booklet, and PSI may include 5 to 10 unscored experimental items in the sitting. The general PSI booklet does not list this series’ fee; PSI shows it at registration, and this guide prints no figure it cannot source. There is no retake limit, and the examination score remains valid for one year under 31 Pa. Code 115.16(3).
Step 3 — Fingerprint and apply
Applicants are fingerprinted through IdentoGO and apply online, with a $200 application fee. The application documents the examination result, and the Department decides licensure. The one-year validity of the score is the scheduling fact of this stage: an application assembled slowly can outrun its own examination.
Step 4 — File the bond before the first client
The licensee files a $20,000 surety bond, and the bond must be in place before the licensee takes a first client. Renewal runs every two years with 24 hours of continuing education. The client’s three-calendar-day rescission right, a term of the Law, belongs in the licensee’s first conversation with every client and in the examination’s regulation material alike.
The examination outline in full
| Outline section | Weight / character |
|---|---|
| Insurance Regulation | 15% |
| General Insurance Concepts | 14% |
| Property and Casualty Insurance Basics | 19% |
| Dwelling Policy | 6% |
| Homeowners Policy | 10% |
| Commercial Property Policies | 8% |
| Commercial Inland Marine | 3% |
| Adjustment Process | 15% |
| Businessowners and other coverages | 10% combined |
Insurance Regulation — 15%
Regulation items test the licensing machinery itself: who may act as a public adjuster, what the application and renewal require, which acts are prohibited, and what discipline the regulator can impose. These items reward exact reading of the state’s own adjuster law rather than general insurance knowledge, and they are the section where candidates from other states most often import the wrong rule from home.
A study note on method: regulation items are the least forgiving of approximate knowledge, because their distractors are usually the correct rule for a neighbouring license or a neighbouring state. Work this section from the statute and rule text with a notebook of contrasts — this license against the producer license, this state against the national pattern — and revise it in short sessions close to the sitting, when retention matters most.
Preparation for this section should be built from the outline’s own subtopics, worked at examination pace. In the program in the works, this section’s practice set is weighted to the outline’s figure for the section, and results are reported against it separately.
General Insurance Concepts — 14%
The basics block tests the vocabulary and architecture of insurance itself: risk, peril and hazard, insurable interest, indemnity, valued policy and agreed-value concepts, underwriting, and the parties to the contract. It is foundational rather than easy — later coverage items assume this language, and a candidate who is shaky here will misread stems that turn on a single defined term.
A study note on method: basics items are lost less often to ignorance than to speed — candidates skim a stem, recognise a term, and answer the term they expected rather than the one printed. Slow the first reading of every basics stem down deliberately in practice, underline the operative word mentally, and let the speed come from the answer, not the reading.
Candidates most often underrate this section because its items look familiar from practice; the examination tests the published version, not the remembered one. In the program in the works, this section’s practice set is weighted to the outline’s figure for the section, and results are reported against it separately.
Property and Casualty Insurance Basics — 19%
Terms and concepts items are definitional on the surface and applied underneath: actual cash value against replacement cost, coinsurance, proximate cause, negligence, liability, subrogation, and the standard conditions vocabulary. The examiners write distractors that are correct definitions of a neighbouring term, so preparation has to separate close concepts, not merely recognise them.
A study note on method: build pairs, not lists. Every term in this block has a neighbour it is confused with — actual cash value against replacement cost, peril against hazard, direct against consequential loss — and the examination lives in the seam between them. Flashcards that present the pair and ask for the distinction outperform flashcards that ask for a definition, because the examination asks for the distinction.
Study this section from the primary text first and from summaries second; its items are written closely to the source. In the program in the works, this section’s practice set is weighted to the outline’s figure for the section, and results are reported against it separately.
Dwelling Policy — 6%
Dwelling policy items concentrate on the DP forms: which perils each form insures, how Coverage A through E are structured, fair rental value and additional living expense treatment, and the valuation basis the form applies. The traps are form-to-form comparisons, because the dwelling and homeowners forms answer the same loss differently.
A study note on method: put the dwelling forms side by side on one page — perils by form, valuation by section, rental and living-expense treatment — and study the grid, because the items are comparisons wearing the dress of individual questions. A candidate who can reproduce the grid unaided owns most of this section.
The efficient method here is worked examples: short scenarios, answered and reviewed, rather than rereading notes. In the program in the works, this section’s practice set is weighted to the outline’s figure for the section, and results are reported against it separately.
Homeowners Policy — 10%
Homeowners items work through the HO forms section by section: Section I property coverages and their internal limits, Section II liability, the named-perils against open-perils distinction, and the exclusions and conditions that decide real claims. Because the examinee population lives in these policies, the items are written at working depth rather than survey depth.
A study note on method: read one complete homeowners policy, jacket and endorsements, before item practice in this section. The items assume a reader who knows where a provision lives in the document — which section, which condition, which exclusion — and that structural knowledge cannot be acquired from summaries, only from the document itself.
Preparation for this section should be built from the outline’s own subtopics, worked at examination pace. In the program in the works, this section’s practice set is weighted to the outline’s figure for the section, and results are reported against it separately.
Commercial Property Policies — 8%
Commercial property items cover the commercial package and commercial property forms: causes-of-loss forms, coinsurance at commercial scale, business income and extra expense, equipment breakdown, and the endorsements that move coverage. Candidates whose experience is residential-only should budget extra time here; the vocabulary is familiar but the forms behave differently.
A study note on method: commercial forms reward candidates who think in exposures before forms — what does this business own, owe, and interrupt — because the items present a business first and a form second. Candidates with residential habits should name the habit when they catch it: the commercial package is not a large homeowners policy, and its coinsurance and business income machinery has no domestic analogue.
Candidates most often underrate this section because its items look familiar from practice; the examination tests the published version, not the remembered one. In the program in the works, this section’s practice set is weighted to the outline’s figure for the section, and results are reported against it separately.
Commercial Inland Marine — 3%
Commercial inland marine items test the floater tradition inside commercial lines: builders risk, contractors equipment, bailee and transportation exposures, and the difference between controlled and uncontrolled forms. The block is small, but its items are specific, and general property knowledge does not substitute for the floater vocabulary.
A study note on method: inland marine is a vocabulary island — floaters, bailee coverages, builders risk, transportation forms — and it should be studied as one, in a single block, with its own glossary. Its items are rarely subtle; they are specific, and they reward the candidate who made the island a separate trip.
Study this section from the primary text first and from summaries second; its items are written closely to the source. In the program in the works, this section’s practice set is weighted to the outline’s figure for the section, and results are reported against it separately.
Adjustment Process — 15%
The adjustment process block is the practice block: duties after a loss, investigation and documentation, estimating and valuation, the proof of loss, negotiation, the appraisal clause, and settlement options. Items are scenario-led — a described loss, a described record, a choice of next steps — and they reward the sequence a careful adjuster actually follows over the sequence that merely sounds decisive.
A study note on method: adjustment items should be answered as the adjuster in the scenario, in sequence — notice, coverage, investigation, documentation, valuation, negotiation — and any answer that skips a step the scenario has not yet completed should be suspected, however attractive its conclusion. Practise by narrating the file forward, not by jumping to the settlement figure.
The efficient method here is worked examples: short scenarios, answered and reviewed, rather than rereading notes. In the program in the works, this section’s practice set is weighted to the outline’s figure for the section, and results are reported against it separately.
Businessowners and other coverages — 10% combined
Businessowners policy items test the BOP as a packaged product: its property and liability sections, eligibility by business class and size, the standard endorsements, and where the package stops and a commercial package policy begins. The recurring error is answering with homeowners logic, because the BOP borrows the homeowners shape while changing several material rules.
A study note on method: the businessowners section is best studied as an eligibility-and-package problem — which businesses the package accepts, what it bundles, and where its standard endorsements move its edges — because the items test the package’s design decisions rather than isolated coverages. Keep a short list of what the BOP will not do; the examination asks from that list disproportionately.
Preparation for this section should be built from the outline’s own subtopics, worked at examination pace. In the program in the works, this section’s practice set is weighted to the outline’s figure for the section, and results are reported against it separately.
The sitting itself: format, scoring, and retakes
Eighty minutes for sixty scored items, plus the possibility of five to ten unscored experimental items inside the same clock, sets the real pace: the scored pace is eighty seconds an item, and the experimental items consume time without yielding score. Candidates should expect the score report to speak in the booklet’s terms — a minimum of 70% — and should treat the one-year validity of a pass as part of the examination result, not as an administrative afterthought. Retakes carry no stated limit in the booklet record; each is a new registration with PSI, and a failed attempt’s section pattern is the retake syllabus.
What this examination is for
The examination also has a protective function that candidates rarely consider while preparing: it is the mechanism by which the state keeps unlicensed and unprepared practice away from policyholders at the worst moment of their financial lives. A public adjuster’s client has usually just lost a home, a business, or both, and is signing a fee contract with a stranger. The licensing route this guide describes — examination, background checks, bonds, and the regulator’s decision — is the state’s answer to that asymmetry, and the examination is its knowledge component. Preparing seriously for it is the first professional act of the career it opens.
Preparation errors this guide is written to prevent
Candidates also err in sequence. Some book the sitting before establishing that they meet the license’s qualifications, and discover an eligibility problem with an examination fee already spent. Some pass and then begin the bond and background steps, although those steps were knowable months earlier. And some study the coverage forms exhaustively while giving the adjustment-process and state-law sections — the sections that describe the job and its rules — a final weekend. The route order in this guide is deliberate: qualify, read the rulebook, study by weight, sit, and file promptly.
After the examination
Licensure completes with fingerprinting, the online application and its $200 fee, and the $20,000 bond. The renewal cycle — two years, 24 hours of continuing education — begins at issuance, and a licensee’s file discipline starts with the bond and the CE record rather than with the first claim. The Department’s licensing pages carry the current forms; because the examination score expires at one year, a candidate who passes should move the application promptly rather than treating the pass as a durable credential in itself.
Working under the license
Practice under the Public Adjuster Law is practice inside a client-protection frame: the contract with the insured, the three-calendar-day rescission right, the bond standing behind the engagement, and the Department’s authority over the license under Chapter 115. The examination’s Regulation section (15%) and Adjustment Process section (15%) are the two halves of that frame — the rules, and the work the rules govern — and a candidate who studies them together will find each makes the other easier to retain. Pennsylvania’s frame is its own; adjusters arriving from other states should not assume their home contract law travelled with them.
A preparation plan that respects the outline
Allocate by the outline’s flatness. No area exceeds 19%, so the plan should be a rotation rather than a campaign: short cycles through all ten areas, with regulation and the adjustment process revisited most often because they are the most Pennsylvania-bound and the least reinforced by general experience. The final week belongs to the small areas — inland marine, dwelling, other coverages — whose combined weight is a fifth of the examination and whose items are the cheapest points available to a broadly prepared candidate.
Three working rules govern the plan whatever the calendar allows. First, study in the examination’s format from the second week onward — timed, single-best-answer, at the sitting’s pace — because format familiarity is a real component of the result and the cheapest one to acquire. Second, keep the state-law material in a separate, recurring track from the coverage material; the two are retained differently, and mixing them in a single rotation starves the statute work. Third, take the score report’s section structure as the plan’s structure from the beginning, so that practice results arrive already organised in the units a retake would need.
Candidates with examination experience in another state should audit their instincts at the door: the coverage vocabulary travels, and almost nothing else does. The license name, the bond, the contract rules, the fees, and the regulator’s process in Pennsylvania are this state’s own, and the state-law section exists to test exactly the material that does not travel.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Pennsylvania Resident Public Adjuster license? It is the license the Insurance Department issues to the adjuster who represents the insured — the policyholder — in a claim, rather than the insurer. Resident Public Adjuster, under the Public Adjuster Law, 63 P.S. 1601 to 1608 (as amended by Act 21 of 2012), and 31 Pa. Code Chapter 115. The holder is retained by the insured, for compensation, to document, evaluate, and negotiate the insured’s claim.
Who regulates public adjusters in Pennsylvania? the Pennsylvania Insurance Department. The regulator writes or administers the licensing rules, receives the application, and issues the license; the examination vendor administers the test and nothing more.
What examination must Pennsylvania public adjuster candidates pass? The Pennsylvania Public Insurance Adjuster Examination (Series 16-19), administered by PSI. 60 items; 80 minutes; computer-based. PSI may add 5 to 10 unscored experimental items
What is the passing standard? 70%, per the PSI candidate booklet for this examination
Is there a pre-licensing education requirement? None required
What else does licensure require besides the examination? Licensure sits alongside fingerprinting, a $20,000 surety bond, and the application the Insurance Department decides. The examination is one input into the application; the Insurance Department issues the license on the completed file, and no candidate may act as a Pennsylvania resident public adjuster before it issues.
How should I divide study time across the outline? By the outline’s own weights, which the guide’s outline section prints in full. The heaviest sections earn the most hours; the state-law material earns short, repeated passes rather than one long session, because statute items are exact and are retained by repetition. Allocate by the outline’s flatness.
What happens if I do not pass? You schedule a new sitting with PSI under its rules and pay the examination fee again. The score report from the failed attempt is the most useful study document you own: read it by section, and rebuild the study plan around the section that cost the pass rather than restarting the whole syllabus.
How is a public adjuster different from an independent adjuster? By client. An independent adjuster adjusts claims on behalf of insurers; a public adjuster is retained by and represents the insured. The licenses, the duties, and in Pennsylvania the licensing treatment are distinct, and preparation for one does not substitute for preparation for the other.
Does passing the examination make me a licensed resident public adjuster? No. Passing satisfies the examination requirement; the license issues when the Insurance Department approves the completed application. Acting as a public adjuster before the license issues is unlicensed practice, however the examination went.
When will the PassProfessor Pennsylvania program open? The program is in the works and enrollment is not open yet. Join the notify list on this page and you will be emailed when enrollment opens; the companion exam guide is available to read now for planning your preparation.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with the Insurance Department or PSI? No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider, not affiliated with the Pennsylvania Insurance Department or PSI Services LLC. The regulator owns the license and the vendor administers the examination; this program is preparation only.
What should I read besides practice material? The primary documents this guide is built on: the vendor’s candidate handbook or bulletin for this examination, the published content outline, and Pennsylvania’s adjuster law as the Insurance Department publishes it. Those documents are the examination’s sources; everything else, this guide included, is a commentary on them.
Can preparation replace any step in the licensing route? No. Preparation — this program included — earns no credit with the Insurance Department, satisfies no education, bond, fingerprint, or application requirement, and is reported to no one. It prepares you for the examination step only, and the guide keeps that boundary in view throughout.