What Order to Take Your CPCU Courses / Which CPCU Course is the Easiest or Hardest

Post last updated: January 20, 2024

Two of the most common questions that CPCU® students ask is:

• What order should I take the CPCU courses in?
• Which CPCU course is the easiest/hardest?

In this article, we’ll answer both of these questions to help you decide how you want to tackle your courses.

In this post:

• Do I have to take the CPCU courses in a particular order?
• Should I start with CPCU or a different designation?
• What order should I take my CPCU courses?
• Which CPCU course is the easiest/hardest?

Ace your AINS® & CPCU® exams with the help of our study materials!

Do I have to take the CPCU courses in a particular order?

No, there is no specific order you have to follow. Furthermore, none of the CPCU courses are a required prerequisite for another course, so you can take the courses in any order you want. However, as discussed below, some of the latter courses do build on concepts that covered in earlier numbered courses, so we believe there is an optimal order to follow when taking your CPCU courses.

Should I start with CPCU or a different designation?

Of all the designations offered by The Institutes, CPCU is the most widely recognized and widely valued one in the insurance industry. However, there are two reasons why you may want to start with a different designation:

• The other designations tend to be more specialized, so if you want to focus on a particular area of insurance, it may be more relevant to your career goals to choose a more focused designation.
• The AINS designation is also fairly broad like the CPCU designation is, except that the AINS program is much, much easier. If you start with the AINS program, you may find it easier to transition into the difficulty of the CPCU exams. However,  the AINS designation loses much of its professional value once you earn your CPCU designation since they cover the same topics, with CPCU going far more in-depth. Most people will see your CPCU designation as “trumping” your AINS designation, the way a bachelor’s degree “trumps” an associates degree, so the time and money you spend on AINS might feel “wasted.”

What order should I take my CPCU courses in?

Given that some courses do build off of the content covered in other courses, here is our suggested order for taking the courses:

• CPCU 500
• CPCU 530 / CPCU 540 (in either order)
• CPCU 520
• CPCU 550
• CPCU 551 (for commercial lines concentration) / CPCU 555 (for personal lines concentration)
• CPCU 552 (for commercial lines concentration) / CPCU 556 (for personal lines concentration)

But doing all of the courses in this specific order is not really that important. Instead, our main advice is to time these specific courses in these specific ways:

• CPCU 520 before CPCU 550
• CPCU 551 before CPCU 552
• CPCU 520 and CPCU 555 before CPCU 556

Those are the courses that build the most off of each other, which is why we made these specific recommendations. Where you fit in the other courses is less important.

Which CPCU course is the easiest/hardest?

The answer to this question will be somewhat individual to each person because your work experience and prior knowledge will have a major impact on how difficult the course is for you.

That said, we would generally rank the difficulty of the individual courses (from easiest to toughest) as follows:

• CPCU 500
• CPCU 556
• CPCU 530
• CPCU 550
• CPCU 520 / CPCU 540 [similar difficulty]
• CPCU 552
• CPCU 551
• CPCU 555

Remember: this is not the order we recommend taking the courses in, since some courses build on top of concepts discussed in other courses. See “What order should I take my CPCU courses in?” above. 

Course-Specific Considerations

Here are our thoughts on the difficulty of each specific course:

CPCU 500 – general overview of the insurance industry and the insurance profession

Many students consider CPCU 500 the easiest course because:

• It contains the least amount of highly-technical concepts
• It does not have many formulas
• The concepts are easy to understand

By the same token, though, the fact that this course does not have a lot of technical concepts means:

• It is more difficult to predict what test questions you might encounter
• You are more likely to be tested on very, very specific details

To give a comparison: if you are taught a formula, there are usually three things you might be tested on: what is the formula itself, what the results are telling you, and how to apply the formula to a scenario. That means you can focus mainly on learning those three things. However, if you are given a whole paragraph discussing a topic and could be tested on any detail, big or small, you potentially have to remember every detail because you don’t know which detail they will test you on. Because CPCU 500 has fewer formulas and more descriptive content, that presents the latter challenge.

CPCU 500 covers a wide variety of mostly high-level topics, and it is unlikely that a student will have expertise in all of those areas. As such, your work experience and prior knowledge are not as likely to give you a major advantage because so many other things will be covered. At the same time, though, the content is not difficult to understand, so even if you don’t have a ton of insurance-related work experience, it won’t be a huge disadvantage either.

CPCU 520 – overview of each department/function within an insurance company

With the most recent version update, CPCU 520 is now one of the more challenging courses because it does contain a lot of technical content. Although the new version has fewer chapters than before, The Institutes basically kept the most challenging topics from the old version of CPCU 520 and then also moved some of the most challenging chapters from the old CPCU 540 course to the new CPCU 520 course.

To pass this exam, you will be required to:

• Read and understand financial statements
• Remember a variety of formulas
• Uunderstand how insurers develop rate and decide on what to charge
• Know how to reinsurance programs apply to specific claim scenarios

Some of these applications require you to go through a multi-step process that involves some math.

People who work in management or who are involved in strategic planning will probably find that their work experience is very relevant to this course.

CPCU 530 – business law, with a specific emphasis on how certain legal concepts apply to insurance

The most recent version of CPCU 530 is significantly easier than the prior version because much of the content was stripped away or pared down. In the past, biggest difficulty with this course was the sheer amount of content and details, but CPCU 530 is now one of the shorter courses.

The content is relatively easy to understand, although there are many lists and categories to remember. A very common type of question you will encounter on the exam is an application-based question where you are given something and asked which category it falls under. For example, you will be given a scenario describing how multiple people jointly own a piece of real estate, and you’ll be asked to identify which of the eight types of property ownership that scenario would fall under.

You are likely to recognize many of the concepts covered in CPCU 530 if:

• You have legal experience
• You have previously taken a business law course
• You are familiar with contracts and contract wording

CPCU 540 – (finance & accounting)

CPCU 540 definitely has the most formulas out of all the courses, but the updated version of this course has significantly fewer formulas and is noticeably easier. The trickiest part for most students is the chapter on present value and future value calculations, which is a basic concept covered in most finance courses. All the other formulas are pretty straightforward.

With CPCU 540, you will definitely have an advantage if:

• You are familiar with reading financial statements
• You have accounting experience
• You have previously taken an accounting course before

CPCU 550 – data science & data analytics

If you do not have a data analytics background, CPCU 550 can be surprisingly challenging because of its highly technical content, which includes computer programming-related concepts and statistical analysis.

Our recommendation is to take this course after CPCU 520 because that will give a thorough understanding of how the insurance industry works. That then allows you to focus on mastering the technical data-related concepts, and you will the appropriate context to quickly understand the discussions about how different departments use different types of data.

CPCU 551 – insurance products for commercial property damage exposures

The two concentration courses relating to property damage exposures (CPCU 551 for commercial property damage and CPCU 555 for personal property damage) are by far the most lengthy courses in the CPCU program. In both, you will learn about various types of policies that cover property damage losses, and essentially go over each major provision within those policies to understand how coverage applies.

We consider these the hardest courses in the CPCU program for several reasons:

• Sheer amount of detail: The exams for these two courses do include questions on the finer nuances of each product type covered, which means there is so much to be remember. You need to be familiar with even the smallest details and cannot get by with only a high-level understanding.
• Numerous close similarities: There are lot of products and concepts that are super similar in terms of their name or how they function, which makes it very easy to mix them up. For example, the CPCU 555 course will cover both the Snowmobile endorsement (which is for personal auto policies) and the Owned Snowmobile endorsement (which is for homeowners policies). Keeping all of the very-similar terms straight can be very tricky.
• Endorsements: Endorsements are always a tricky topic to study because they modify the standard terms of a policy contract language. This means you have to remember what the normal terms are and how each endorsement changes those terms.
• Putting it all together: Many of the exam questions involve determining which coverage form is best suited for covering a particular exposure, or whether or not a particular loss scenario would be covered. This requires you to be familiar with ALL the policy forms so that you can decide either which one is the best option for a situation or how all the forms will interact to affect coverage for that loss scenario. This type of applied learning is far more difficult than just memorizing and regurgitating isolated facts.

Many students have described CPCU 551 and CPCU 555 as a “dark horse” that they were totally not expecting to be as difficult as they were.

If you have lots of experience with the specific products and policy types discussed in these courses, that will obviously give you a leg up with these two courses.

CPCU 552 – insurance products for commercial liability exposures

CPCU 552 is definitely easier than CPCU 551 because there is less content and thus details to remember, but it does refer back to some of the policy types discussed in CPCU 551. As such, we recommend taking CPCU 551 before diving into CPCU 552.

For most students, the trickiest chapter from CPCU 552 is the chapter on excess & umbrella insurance.

As with CPCU 551 and CPCU 555, anyone who is already familiar with the policy types discussed in CPCU 552 through their work will have a major advantage going into this course.

CPCU 555 – insurance products for personal property damage exposures

CPCU 555 is highly difficult for the same reasons stated above with respect to CPCU 551. It also has the added difficult of the personal finance chapter.

Some students find that chapter to feel totally out of left field because it has almost nothing to do with insurance.  Instead, that chapter talks about financial planning and investing. Knowing a client’s financial situation might be somewhat helpful in assessing their insurance needs, but not so much that you would expect an entire chapter to be devoted to it. The nature of the content feels pretty different too. While the rest of CPCU 555 centers around looking at specific policy provisions and understanding how they affect coverage, Chapter 5 is essentially a laundry list of different types of investments.

As with CPCU 551, many students have described this course as “the REAL beast” that was far more difficult than expected.

If you have lots of experience with the specific products and policy types discussed in CPCU 555, that will give you a noticeable advantage going into this course.

CPCU 556 – strategic decision making for personal lines insurance

In terms of the material’s complexity, CPCU 556 is actually on the easier side. However, we strongly recommend waiting until you have finished at least CPCU 520 and CPCU 555 since CPCU 556 builds quite a bit on the concepts covered in those two courses. 

More specifically, CPCU 556 talks about how different business decisions will affect the various departments within an insurance company, and vice versa. CPCU 520 explains what each department does in great detail and some of the important metrics that are alluded to in CPCU 556.

Besides that, CPCU 556 talks a lot about how to underwrite different types of policies profitably, which is greatly influenced by what those types of policies cover. CPCU 555 covers exactly that topic, so taking CPCU 555 first is hugely beneficial.

Conquer your AINS & CPCU exams using our study materials!