This guide covers Virginia’s Public Adjuster license: the Bureau of Insurance as regulator under Article 4.1 of Chapter 18 of Title 38.2, Prometric’s Series 11-08 examination of 50 scored questions plus 5 pre-test questions in one hour at a $35 fee, the published outline weights from Adjusting Losses at 25% to Insurance Regulation at 7%, the 183-day examination validity, and the $50,000 bond attested on the application. PassProfessor’s companion program is in the works.
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Virginia’s licensing record is short and exact — a single statutory article, a single examination series, a single bond — and this guide mirrors that economy. It takes the Bureau’s published sequence (examination before application, results valid 183 days), works the eight outline sections in weight order from Prometric’s published outline, and states plainly the one figure the bulletin does not publish: the passing threshold. A guide for this license earns trust by what it refuses to invent as much as by what it reports.
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 Virginia 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 | Public Adjuster — the only adjuster type Virginia licenses (‘No other type of adjuster, including company or independent adjusters, require licensure in Virginia at this time’ — Bureau of Insurance) |
| Regulator | Virginia State Corporation Commission, Bureau of Insurance; law at Va. Code 38.2-1845.1 through 38.2-1845.24 (Title 38.2, Chapter 18, Article 4.1) |
| Examination | VA Public Adjuster, Series 11-08, administered by Prometric at test centres or remotely through ProProctor |
| Format | 50 scored questions plus 5 unscored pre-test questions; 1 hour |
| Examination fee | $35 per attempt (third-party fee, paid to Prometric, per the Prometric Virginia candidate information bulletin effective December 13, 2024) |
| Passing threshold | Not published: the Prometric bulletin and the Series 11-08 outline state no numeric passing threshold; none is stated on this page |
| Outline weights | Insurance Regulation 7%; Insurance Basics 20%; Adjusting Losses 25%; Dwelling Policy 7%; Homeowners Policy 13%; Commercial Package Policy 10%; Businessowners Policy 13%; Other Coverages 5% |
| Sequence and validity | Resident applicants pass the examination before applying; examination results remain valid for a license application for 183 calendar days |
| Bond | $50,000 bond in favour of the Commonwealth, attested on the application and kept in force while the license is in effect; FBI fingerprint check required |
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. Public Adjuster — the only adjuster type Virginia licenses (‘No other type of adjuster, including company or independent adjusters, require licensure in Virginia at this time’ — Bureau of Insurance). 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.
Regulator. Virginia State Corporation Commission, Bureau of Insurance; law at Va. Code 38.2-1845.1 through 38.2-1845.24 (Title 38.2, Chapter 18, Article 4.1). 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.
Examination. VA Public Adjuster, Series 11-08, administered by Prometric at test centres or remotely through ProProctor. 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.
Format. 50 scored questions plus 5 unscored pre-test questions; 1 hour. 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.
Examination fee. $35 per attempt (third-party fee, paid to Prometric, per the Prometric Virginia candidate information bulletin effective December 13, 2024). 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.
Passing threshold. Not published: the Prometric bulletin and the Series 11-08 outline state no numeric passing threshold; none is stated on this page. 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.
Outline weights. Insurance Regulation 7%; Insurance Basics 20%; Adjusting Losses 25%; Dwelling Policy 7%; Homeowners Policy 13%; Commercial Package Policy 10%; Businessowners Policy 13%; Other Coverages 5%. 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.
Sequence and validity. Resident applicants pass the examination before applying; examination results remain valid for a license application for 183 calendar days. 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.
Bond. $50,000 bond in favour of the Commonwealth, attested on the application and kept in force while the license is in effect; FBI fingerprint check 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.
The licensing route, step by step
Step 1 — Start on the Bureau’s public adjuster page
The Bureau of Insurance’s public adjuster page is the license’s home: the statutory definition, the statement that no other adjuster type is licensed in Virginia, the direction of resident applicants to pass the examination before applying, and the bond attestation built into the application. Article 4.1 of Title 38.2, Chapter 18 (sections 38.2-1845.1 through 38.2-1845.24) is the law behind the page, and the Regulation section of the examination is drawn from it.
Step 2 — Register for Series 11-08 with Prometric
Prometric administers the examination at test centres and remotely through ProProctor. The series fee is $35 per attempt under the Virginia candidate information bulletin effective December 13, 2024. The sitting is one hour for 50 scored questions plus 5 unscored pre-test questions. Examination results remain valid for a license application for 183 calendar days — the clock that governs the next steps.
Step 3 — Sit the eight-section examination
The published outline weights Adjusting Losses at 25%, Insurance Basics at 20%, Homeowners and Businessowners at 13% each, the Commercial Package at 10%, Dwelling and Insurance Regulation at 7% each, and Other Coverages at 5%. Neither the bulletin nor the outline states a numeric passing threshold, and this guide states none; the score report Prometric issues is the operative record of the result.
Step 4 — Apply with the bond attested
The electronic application includes the attestation that the applicant has, and will keep in force for as long as the license remains in effect, a $50,000 bond in favour of the Commonwealth with corporate sureties licensed by the Commission. The FBI fingerprint check completes the file. Because the examination result expires at 183 days, the bond should be arranged while the candidate studies, not after the pass.
The examination outline in full
| Outline section | Weight / character |
|---|---|
| Insurance Regulation | 7% |
| Insurance Basics | 20% |
| Adjusting Losses | 25% |
| Dwelling Policy | 7% |
| Homeowners Policy | 13% |
| Commercial Package Policy | 10% |
| Businessowners Policy | 13% |
| Other Coverages | 5% |
Insurance Regulation — 7%
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.
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.
Insurance Basics — 20%
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.
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.
Adjusting Losses — 25%
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.
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.
Dwelling Policy — 7%
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.
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.
Homeowners Policy — 13%
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.
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.
Commercial Package Policy — 10%
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.
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.
Businessowners Policy — 13%
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.
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.
Other Coverages — 5%
Other coverages is the residual block: inland marine and floaters, flood program mechanics, earthquake and specialty endorsements, and the miscellaneous forms the outline gathers at the margin. Individually small, these items are disproportionately missed because candidates spend their study time where the weights are largest and leave the margin unreviewed.
A study note on method: the residual block is where outlines hide their most specific items — named floaters, program mechanics, and endorsement details that general study never touches. The efficient preparation is a checklist pass through the outline’s own subtopics for this section in the final week, converting unknowns into knowns while the large sections are maintained by timed practice.
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.
The sitting itself: format, scoring, and retakes
Sixty minutes, fifty-five questions presented, fifty of them scored. Prometric’s bulletin for Virginia examinations describes the score report in percentage terms by section, without publishing a passing threshold for this series — a deliberate documentary gap this guide preserves. The practical consequence is preparation strategy: with no published line, the rational target is command of the whole outline, weighted by the published percentages, rather than a minimising pass at any one section. Retakes are new registrations with Prometric at the $35 fee, inside the same 183-day relationship between examination and application that governs a first pass.
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
After the pass, the application window is the story: 183 calendar days in which the bond attestation, the fingerprint check, and the application must come together at the Bureau. A candidate who passes in January and assembles papers in August has let the examination expire. The license, once issued, is maintained with the bond kept in force — the attestation is a continuing condition, not a one-time form — and with the continuing requirements the Bureau publishes for the license, including the continuing education the Commonwealth applies to public adjusters on its two-year cycle.
Working under the license
Practice under Article 4.1 includes the engagement rules the article itself carries: the contract with the insured, the catastrophe fee cap the article imposes, and the three-business-day rescission right. Even the article’s newest section is practice law — the 2026 session added section 38.2-1845.24, making unauthorised public adjusting unlawful — which tells a licensee something about the Commonwealth’s posture: the license is the boundary of lawful practice, policed as such. The Regulation section’s seven percent should be studied as the article’s table of contents, because it is.
A preparation plan that respects the outline
Weight the plan by the outline and by the calendar together. Adjusting Losses and Insurance Basics are 45% of the sitting and deserve close to half the hours; the three policy-form blocks in the teens divide most of the rest; Regulation, at 7%, is a short-statute section that repays complete reading of Article 4.1 rather than sampling. On the calendar side, schedule the sitting only when the bond and application can follow inside 183 days — in this state, examination timing is a licensing decision, not merely a study decision.
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 Virginia 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 Virginia Public Adjuster license? It is the license the Bureau of Insurance issues to the adjuster who represents the insured — the policyholder — in a claim, rather than the insurer. Public Adjuster — the only adjuster type Virginia licenses (‘No other type of adjuster, including company or independent adjusters, require licensure in Virginia at this time’ — Bureau of Insurance). The holder is retained by the insured, for compensation, to document, evaluate, and negotiate the insured’s claim.
Who regulates public adjusters in Virginia? the Virginia State Corporation Commission, Bureau of Insurance. 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 Virginia public adjuster candidates pass? The VA Public Adjuster examination (Series 11-08), administered by Prometric. 50 scored questions plus 5 unscored pre-test questions; 1 hour
What is the passing standard? Not published: the Prometric bulletin and the Series 11-08 outline state no numeric passing threshold; none is stated on this page
Is there a pre-licensing education requirement? See the verified facts table on this page for the education position for this license, and confirm the current position with the Bureau of Insurance before planning around it.
What else does licensure require besides the examination? Licensure sits alongside a $50,000 bond in favour of the Commonwealth, attested on the application, and fingerprinting. The examination is one input into the application; the Bureau of Insurance issues the license on the completed file, and no candidate may act as a Virginia 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. Weight the plan by the outline and by the calendar together.
What happens if I do not pass? You schedule a new sitting with Prometric 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 Virginia 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 public adjuster? No. Passing satisfies the examination requirement; the license issues when the Bureau of Insurance approves the completed application. Acting as a public adjuster before the license issues is unlicensed practice, however the examination went.
When will the PassProfessor Virginia 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 Bureau of Insurance or Prometric? No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider, not affiliated with the Virginia State Corporation Commission, Bureau of Insurance or Prometric. 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 Virginia’s adjuster law as the Bureau of Insurance 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 Bureau of Insurance, 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.