What Is DE-PC?

What Is DE-PC?

DE-PC stands for the Delaware Property & Casualty Insurance Producer Exam - the state licensing test that anyone seeking to sell property or casualty insurance in Delaware must pass. It is not a designation you earn once and display forever; it's a regulatory gate maintained by the Delaware Department of Insurance to confirm that a producer understands policy structures, contract law, insurance terminology, and the specific statutes that govern how property and casualty products are sold within the state.

If you've seen "DE-PC" referenced elsewhere with different fees, different pass rates, or a different sponsoring body, that's a different credential entirely. This article covers only the Delaware Property & Casualty Insurance Producer Exam as defined by the Delaware Department of Insurance and delivered through Pearson VUE testing centers.

Who Administers the Exam

The Delaware Department of Insurance owns the licensing requirement, but day-to-day test delivery is handled by Pearson VUE, which runs the testing centers, manages scheduling, and publishes the candidate handbook that governs question counts and timing. The content itself - what's tested and in what proportion - comes from Delaware's official content outline, most recently updated January 15, 2025, which defines the scored-item weighting for each of the 14 domains.

Because two organizations are involved, candidates sometimes get confused about where to find authoritative information. Scheduling, ID requirements, and appointment logistics come from Pearson VUE; content weighting, licensing eligibility, and legal requirements come from the Delaware Department of Insurance. For a deeper breakdown of what's tested at each stage, see the DE-PC Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 14 Content Areas.

Exam Format and Question Counts

DE-PC is really two exams, not one. Candidates choose Property, Casualty, or both.

The pretest questions are unscored items Pearson VUE uses to evaluate future exam content - they're mixed in indistinguishably, so there's no way to identify them during the test. That's a practical reason not to obsess over any single question you find unusually strange; treat every item as if it counts, and move on if something feels off.

Both the Property and Casualty exams are structured with two distinct sections: a general-knowledge portion covering broad insurance concepts, and a Delaware-law portion covering state-specific statutes, regulations, and bulletins. This split matters for how retakes work, which we cover below.

The 14 Domains, Property vs. Casualty

Delaware's content outline organizes the material into 14 domains. Domains 1 through 7 belong to the Property exam; Domains 8 through 14 belong to Casualty. Percentages are calculated using the scored-item counts within each exam, not combined across both lines.

On the Casualty side, the structure mirrors Property but with different labels and slightly different weights: Domain 8 (Types of Policies, Bonds, and Related Terms, 24.2%), Domain 9 (Insurance Terms and Related Concepts, 15.8%), Domain 10 (Policy Provisions, 12.6%), Domains 11-13 (Delaware Statutes, Rules, Regulations, and Bulletins across shared, cross-line, and casualty-only categories, at 13.7%, 5.3%, and 15.8% respectively), and Domain 14 (Insurance Ethics, 12.6%).

For a full walkthrough of every domain with more granular subtopics, the DE-PC Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 14 Content Areas goes domain by domain in more depth than we can cover here.

Eligibility and Licensing Steps

One detail that surprises out-of-state candidates: Delaware requires no prelicensing education before sitting for DE-PC. There's no mandated course hours requirement standing between you and exam day, though many candidates still choose structured study to handle the volume of Delaware-specific law tested.

Resident applicants do have a compliance step beyond the exam itself: completing state and federal criminal-history reporting as part of the licensure process. This isn't a study topic, but it's a procedural requirement candidates need to plan for alongside exam scheduling, since it affects how quickly a license can be issued after a passing score.

For a complete rundown of every prerequisite, background-check mechanics, and how they interact with exam scheduling, see DE-PC Requirements 2026: Eligibility, Prerequisites & How to Qualify.

Fees, Scheduling, and Retakes

Candidates who schedule both the Property and Casualty exams on the same day pay a single $90 fee rather than two separate fees. This bundled pricing is a meaningful consideration if you're planning to hold a dual license - sequencing both exams on one testing day can be more economical than spreading them across separate appointments.

Pearson VUE also offers Spanish-language versions of the exam, which is worth knowing early if that's your preferred testing language, since it may affect which testing centers or appointment slots are available.

Retakes work at the portion level, not the whole-exam level. Each exam - Property and Casualty alike - has a general-knowledge portion and a Delaware-law portion. If you pass one portion but fail the other, you only need to retake the portion you failed. However, there's a time constraint: both portions must be passed within one year of each other, or your passing portion expires and you'll need to retake it too.

For a full cost breakdown that also accounts for study materials and any incidental fees, see DE-PC Certification Cost 2026: Complete Pricing Breakdown. And if you want to know exactly what score threshold you're aiming for on each portion, check DE-PC Passing Score 2026: Exactly What You Need to Pass.

Continuing Education After You Pass

Passing DE-PC gets you licensed, but it's not the end of your compliance obligations. Resident producers must complete 24 continuing-education hours per biennium, and 3 of those hours must be ethics-specific - a direct extension of how heavily ethics is weighted on the original exam (Domain 7 and Domain 14 each account for roughly an eighth to a seventh of their respective exam's scored questions).

Producers who write flood policies under the National Flood Insurance Program have an additional requirement: a 2-hour flood course, which counts within the general continuing-education requirement rather than as a separate add-on.

Who Actually Takes the DE-PC

DE-PC candidates are typically people entering or transferring into the property and casualty insurance business in Delaware: new producers joining an independent agency, captive agents appointed by a specific carrier, career-changers moving into insurance sales, and existing producers licensed in other states who are adding Delaware as a resident or non-resident license. Because Delaware doesn't mandate prelicensing coursework, the candidate pool includes both people with formal insurance training and people learning the material largely on their own before test day.

Agencies and carriers operating in Delaware generally require this license before a producer can bind property or casualty coverage, sell homeowners or auto policies, or write commercial lines in the state. If you're evaluating whether pursuing this license makes sense for your career path, Is the DE-PC Certification Worth It? Complete ROI Analysis 2026 and DE-PC Salary Guide 2026: Complete Earnings Analysis dig into the practical upside, and DE-PC Jobs looks at the kinds of roles this license opens up.

Building a Study Plan Around the Domain Weights

The smartest way to allocate study time for DE-PC is to let the domain percentages do the planning for you. Domain 1 (Types of Policies) alone accounts for over a quarter of the Property exam's scored questions, and Domain 8 plays the same outsized role on Casualty - so these should anchor your earliest and longest study sessions, not get squeezed in at the end.

This sequencing works whether you're doing timed practice questions, flashcards, or reading through statute summaries - the point is that time spent should roughly track the scored-question weight of each domain, not an even split across all 14. For a more detailed week-by-week plan with specific study techniques, see the DE-PC Study Guide 2026: How to Pass on Your First Attempt. If you're also trying to gauge how much total effort to expect, How Hard Is the DE-PC Exam? Complete Difficulty Guide 2026 and DE-PC Pass Rate 2026: What the Data Shows provide useful context before you build your calendar.

Once you've got a domain-weighted plan in place, running realistic practice sessions on our DE-PC practice test platform is the fastest way to see which domains still need work before you commit to a test date. Reviewing missed questions by domain - rather than just tracking an overall score - will tell you exactly where to redirect your remaining study hours on the practice site.

Frequently Asked Questions