ND-PC Passing Score 2026: Exactly What You Need to Pass

The 70% Threshold: What Passing Actually Means

The North Dakota Property & Casualty Insurance Producer Exam (ND-PC) has a single, unambiguous passing standard: you need 70% correct on scored questions. Because each exam - Property and Casualty - contains 110 scored questions, 70% translates to exactly 77 correct answers. There's no curve, no percentile ranking against other candidates, and no partial credit for close guesses. You either land 77 or more scored correct answers, or you don't pass that attempt.

This is a criterion-referenced exam, not a norm-referenced one. PSI Services LLC, which administers the test on behalf of the North Dakota Insurance & Securities Department, sets the bar at a fixed percentage rather than adjusting it based on how everyone else performed on your test date. That means your only job is to answer 77 of 110 scored items correctly - nothing about the difficulty of your specific question set changes that target.

How ND-PC Scoring Works

Each ND-PC exam - Property and Casualty are administered as two entirely separate tests - is built from 110 scored questions plus an additional 5-10 unscored experimental questions. Those experimental items are indistinguishable from the scored ones on screen; they're being tested for future exam forms and do not count toward your 77-correct threshold. Practically, this means your actual test may contain 115-120 total multiple-choice questions, but only 110 of them determine your pass/fail outcome.

You get 150 minutes to work through the full question set on each exam, which averages out to a little over a minute per question if you use the entire allotted time. That's a workable pace for a well-prepared candidate, but it leaves little room for excessive second-guessing on questions you don't immediately recognize.

Because you can't tell scored questions apart from experimental ones, the smartest strategy is to treat every question - no matter how oddly worded or unfamiliar it seems - as if it counts. Skipping or rushing through items you assume are "probably experimental" is a gamble that can directly cost you points toward the 77 you need.

Two Separate Exams, Two Separate Passing Scores

A detail that trips up new candidates: Property and Casualty are not one combined test. They are licensed and tested independently, each with its own $64 fee, its own 110 scored questions, its own 150-minute clock, and its own 70% passing requirement. Passing Property does not automatically satisfy the Casualty requirement, and vice versa - you must clear the 77-correct bar on each line you intend to hold.

If your career plan involves writing both personal and commercial lines, you'll eventually sit for both exams, pay both $64 fees, and hit 70% on each independently. For a full breakdown of what that adds up to across licensing, fingerprinting, and renewal, see the ND-PC Certification Cost 2026: Complete Pricing Breakdown.

Why Domain Weighting Determines Where You Score

Not all 110 scored questions are distributed evenly across topics. Each exam is built from a defined set of content domains, and the number of questions pulled from each domain is proportional to its weight. Since North Dakota Laws and Regulations makes up 27.3% of the Casualty exam and 23.6% of the Property exam, it's by far the single most heavily tested domain on either test - more than double the weight of most other individual domains.

This has a direct implication for your passing-score strategy: if you're weak on North Dakota-specific statutes and regulatory procedures, you're not just missing "a few questions" - you're jeopardizing a large enough slice of the exam that it can single-handedly determine whether you land above or below 77.

Beyond that top domain, both exams spread remaining weight across Insurance Regulation, Federal Laws and Regulations, General Insurance, and line-specific content - Property Insurance Basics, Dwelling Policy Concepts, Homeowners Policy Concepts, Commercial Property Policies, and the Businessowners Policy on the Property side; Casualty Insurance Basics, Personal Automobile Insurance, Commercial Automobile Policy, Commercial General Liability, and Workers' Compensation Laws on the Casualty side. For a full domain-by-domain breakdown of all 20 content areas across both exams, see the ND-PC Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 20 Content Areas.

Where Candidates Typically Lose Points

Because the passing score is fixed at 77 correct, every wrong answer counts the same, whether it comes from a heavily weighted domain or a lightly weighted one. That said, certain content areas tend to be where preparation gaps show up most:

• State-specific statute questions - candidates who studied only general P&C principles without drilling North Dakota's specific rules often underperform here, despite it being the largest domain on both exams.
• Policy form details - Dwelling, Homeowners, Businessowners, and Commercial General Liability questions frequently test precise coverage triggers, exclusions, and endorsements rather than broad concepts.
• Federal law overlays - Federal Laws and Regulations appears on both exams and is easy to underweight during self-study since it's a smaller slice than state law.
• Workers' Compensation Laws - a Casualty-only domain that candidates coming from a personal-lines background sometimes neglect.

If you want a sense of how these gaps translate into real difficulty, the How Hard Is the ND-PC Exam? Complete Difficulty Guide 2026 breaks down which domains candidates report as most challenging.

What Happens If You Fall Short of 77

If you score below 77 correct on either exam, you simply haven't passed that line yet - but the process isn't punitive. Retakes are unlimited, meaning you can register and sit for the same exam again as many times as needed, each time paying the standard $64 fee. There's no mandatory waiting period built into the fee structure described by PSI's candidate bulletin, so a motivated candidate can often retest relatively quickly after identifying and shoring up their weak domain.

The practical move after a failed attempt is to treat your unofficial score summary (typically provided at the test center) as a diagnostic tool. If North Dakota Laws and Regulations pulled your score down, that's the highest-leverage area to review before your next sitting, given its outsized weight on both exams. For a look at how outcomes typically break down across attempts, see the ND-PC Pass Rate 2026: What the Data Shows.

Mapping Study Time to the Passing-Score Target

Since North Dakota Laws and Regulations carries the most weight on both exams, it deserves the earliest and most repeated attention in any study plan - not because it's necessarily the hardest material conceptually, but because it offers the highest point return per hour studied.

This sequencing isn't generic - it directly reflects the fact that North Dakota Laws and Regulations is worth more than 1 in 4 questions on the Casualty exam and nearly 1 in 4 on Property, so front-loading that content gives you the biggest early boost toward 77 correct. For a more detailed day-by-day approach, the ND-PC Study Guide 2026: How to Pass on Your First Attempt expands on this framework, and running timed sets on our practice test platform throughout each week is the fastest way to confirm you're tracking toward 77 correct rather than just feeling ready.

Registration, Fees, and Score Validity

Hitting 70% only matters if the rest of your paperwork lines up. Applicants must be at least 18 years old, reside in or maintain a principal place of business in North Dakota, complete a fingerprint-based criminal history check, and apply through NIPR. There's no prelicensing course requirement in North Dakota, so your exam score is genuinely the main gate standing between you and a license.

Once you pass, your score remains valid for one year - plenty of time to complete the application, fingerprinting, and $100 initial license fee, but not indefinite, so don't pass Property in January and let a Casualty attempt drift past the one-year mark. After licensure, renewal happens biennially by the last day of your birth month for $25, along with 24 continuing-education hours that must include 3 hours of ethics.

Every current fee, timing, and eligibility detail traces back to the state-hosted PSI candidate bulletin dated December 27, 2024 - the ND-PC Requirements 2026: Eligibility, Prerequisites & How to Qualify page walks through each eligibility step in order, and the ND-PC Exam Dates 2026: Testing Windows, Deadlines & Scheduling guide covers how to actually get a seat scheduled once you're ready.

If you're still weighing whether the investment of time and the $64-per-exam cost is worthwhile relative to what a North Dakota P&C license opens up professionally, the Is the ND-PC Certification Worth It? Complete ROI Analysis 2026 article and the ND-PC Salary Guide 2026: Complete Earnings Analysis are useful companion reads once you've got the passing-score mechanics down. And when exam day gets close, a condensed reference like the ND-PC Cheat Sheet 2026: One-Page Review of Must-Know Facts paired with a final run-through on our full-length practice tests is the best way to confirm your readiness against the actual 77-correct benchmark before you walk into the test center.

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