No — and four state legislatures say so in a way that is stronger than "not required". They say coverage above the minimum is not part of the law at all.
Most pages answer this question by explaining what collision and comprehensive cover, which is a description of products rather than an answer about obligations. The answer is in the financial-responsibility statutes, and the operative clause is not the one that sets the minimums. It is the clause immediately after it, which pushes everything above the minimum outside the statute's reach entirely. Once you have read it, the question stops being "is full coverage required" and becomes "who is the party requiring it", which has a specific and checkable answer that is not the state.
This page publishes no premium figures. Every dollar amount below is a statutory liability limit or a deposit figure a state publishes itself.
What the certificate certifies, and the sentence one DMV puts on it
An SR-22 is a certificate an insurer files with a state agency to prove a policy exists. It is not a policy, and it is not a coverage level — what an SR-22 actually is covers that distinction in full. What the certificate attests to is narrow. The Illinois Secretary of State's leaflet Proof of Financial Responsibility — SR-22 (DSD SR 1.15) states the whole requirement in one sentence:
"The amount of coverage for an SR-22 Certificate must be at least $25,000 for one person killed or injured; $50,000 for two or more people killed or injured; and $20,000 for property damage."
Three liability numbers. Nothing about the car you drive. And the form the insurer signs, reproduced on that same leaflet, certifies only that the company "has issued to the above named insured a motor vehicle liability policy as required by the financial responsibility laws of this State".
California's DMV goes further and says the negative out loud, which is unusual. On its insurance requirements page, directly under the minimum liability figures, sits this line:
"Comprehensive or collision insurance does not meet vehicle financial responsibility requirements."
That is a state agency stating that the coverages people mean by "full coverage" are not merely optional for financial-responsibility purposes — they do not count towards it. You cannot substitute them, and adding them proves nothing extra to the DMV. The same page lists the "California Proof of Insurance Certificate (SR 22) form for broad coverage or owner's policy" among the documents it may demand, which is the SR-22 sitting in the same list as documents about liability, not damage.
The clause that settles it: coverage above the minimum is outside the statute
Here is the part that is genuinely not published anywhere in the consumer coverage of this question. Three states include, right in their financial-responsibility chapters, a provision that removes excess coverage from the chapter's scope. The wording is nearly identical across them, which tells you it descends from a common model act.
Iowa Code § 321A.21(7):
"Any policy which grants the coverage required for a motor vehicle liability policy may also grant any lawful coverage in excess of or in addition to the coverage specified for a motor vehicle liability policy and such excess or additional coverage shall not be subject to the provisions of this chapter."
And the same subsection then narrows the defined term itself: with respect to a policy granting excess or additional coverage, "the term 'motor vehicle liability policy' shall apply only to that part of the coverage which is required by this section".
Texas says it in three short subsections. Tex. Transp. Code § 601.078 permits a policy to provide coverage "in excess of or in addition to the required coverage", then states flatly in subsection (b): "The excess or additional coverage is not subject to this chapter." Subsection (c) closes it: "the term 'motor vehicle liability insurance policy' applies only to that part of the coverage that is required under this subchapter."
625 ILCS 5/7-317(g) carries the same permission: "Any motor vehicle liability policy may, however, grant any lawful coverage in excess of or in addition to the coverage herein specified".
The consequence is more interesting than a simple "not required". If you buy collision and comprehensive on a policy carrying an SR-22, the state's financial-responsibility law does not see that part of your policy. It is legally invisible to the filing. Which means the filing cannot require it, cannot credit it, and cannot be satisfied by it — the three things people variously assume.
The limits each state actually requires
Every figure below is the statutory liability minimum the certified policy must carry, read in the codified text on the date shown. Not one of these statutes names a physical-damage requirement anywhere in the same chapter.
| State |
Section setting the minimum |
Bodily injury, one person |
Bodily injury, per accident |
Property damage |
Physical damage required by the chapter |
Read on |
| Texas |
Transp. Code § 601.072(a-1) |
$30,000 |
$60,000 |
$25,000 |
None |
2026-09-02 |
| California |
Veh. Code § 16451(a)(2) |
$30,000 |
$60,000 |
$15,000 |
None |
2026-09-02 |
| Illinois |
625 ILCS 5/7-317(b)(3) |
$25,000 |
$50,000 |
$20,000 |
None |
2026-09-02 |
| Iowa |
Iowa Code § 321A.21(2)(b) |
$20,000 |
$40,000 |
$15,000 |
None |
2026-09-02 |
| Florida |
Fla. Stat. § 324.021(7)(a)–(c) |
$10,000 |
$20,000 |
$10,000 |
None |
2026-09-02 |
Compiled from the statutory text of each state, read 2 September 2026. California's figures apply to policies "issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2025" under § 16451(a)(2).
Two observations that none of the five sources makes, and that you can check against the table.
The states that raised their limits raised liability, and only liability. California's § 16451 is the clearest case, because the increase is written into the statute with dates attached. The pre-2025 figures were $15,000 / $30,000 / $5,000; § 16451(a)(2) lifted them to $30,000 / $60,000 / $15,000 for policies issued or renewed from 1 January 2025; and subsection (b) provides that from 1 January 2035 the minimums increase again "by twenty thousand dollars ($20,000) for bodily injury or death for one person, by forty thousand dollars ($40,000) for bodily injury or death for all persons, and by ten thousand dollars ($10,000) for property damage". Three separate legislative interventions across a decade, and every one of them moved a third-party liability number. None of them added a first-party coverage. A legislature that wanted filings to prove you could repair your own car has had repeated opportunities to say so.
Property damage does not track bodily injury. Illinois requires $20,000 of property damage against a $25,000 bodily-injury figure — a ratio of 0.8. Texas requires $25,000 against $30,000, a ratio of 0.83. Florida requires $10,000 against $10,000 under Fla. Stat. § 324.021(7), a ratio of 1.0. California requires $15,000 against $30,000, a ratio of 0.5. The one coverage in the group that pays for damage to a vehicle is property-damage liability, and it pays for someone else's vehicle — and the states weight it wildly differently relative to injury. If the shape of these statutes were driven by protecting cars, that column would be the consistent one. It is the least consistent one.
If you want to see the spread applied to the two policy modalities, does SR-22 cover any car you drive sets the same five states side by side by owner's and operator's policy.
Where a full-coverage requirement really comes from
Two state insurance departments answer this in one sentence each, and they name the same party.
The Illinois Department of Insurance, in its auto insurance shopping guide, puts it as plainly as it can be put:
"Illinois law doesn't require physical damage coverage, but your lender may."
The same guide adds, in its overview of what auto insurance is for: "In addition, lending institutions may require physical damage insurance (collision coverage) for a financed vehicle."
The Texas Department of Insurance says the same in its auto insurance guide, and then describes what happens if you drop it — which is the detail that makes the point expensive rather than academic:
"If you still owe money on your car, your lender will require you to have collision and comprehensive coverages. If you cancel or lose these coverages, your lender will buy single-interest coverage and add the cost to your loan payment. This coverage is expensive and protects only the lender."
Read those two together and the shape of the real answer appears. The requirement is contractual, it is enforced by a private party, and the enforcement mechanism is not a suspended licence but a charge added to your loan for a policy that does not protect you. That is a completely different risk from the one the SR-22 creates, and the two are often discussed as if they were one decision.
So the practical rule is: if the car is financed or leased, the full-coverage question was settled by your loan agreement before the filing existed, and the SR-22 sits on top of whatever the lender already obliges you to carry. If you own the car outright, the state's requirement is liability-only and full coverage is a genuine choice about your own money. In neither case does the filing decide it.
TDI's guide also notes, in its own words, that "Collision and comprehensive coverages don't have dollar limits" in the way liability coverages do — they are bounded by the car's value rather than by a stated limit. That is worth knowing when someone tells you a quote is "full coverage": the phrase describes a bundle, not a level, and there is no statutory definition of it to hold anyone to.
The one time the state does raise the bar — and it is still liability
There is a filing that demands more than the ordinary minimum, and it is the best available test of whether states ever reach for physical damage. They do not.
Florida's post-DUI filing, the FR-44, is imposed by Fla. Stat. § 324.023. It requires an owner or operator convicted of driving under the influence to maintain the ability to respond in damages in the amount of:
"$100,000 because of bodily injury to, or death of, one person in any one crash and, subject to such limits for one person, in the amount of $300,000 because of bodily injury to, or death of, two or more persons in any one crash and in the amount of $50,000 because of property damage in any one crash"
That is ten times Florida's ordinary bodily-injury minimum and five times its property-damage minimum. It is the most demanding financial-responsibility filing in the country. And it is three liability numbers. The statute adds one alternative — "such certificate of deposit must be at least $350,000" — and even that is a pot of money for paying third parties. The comparison between the two filings is worked through in SR-22 versus FR-44.
The non-insurance alternatives make the same point from another direction. Illinois tells drivers that instead of an SR-22 certificate "you may deposit $70,000 in cash or securities with the State Treasurer, file a surety bond, or file a real estate bond approved by a court of record". Texas allows financial responsibility to be established by depositing $55,000 with the comptroller under § 601.122. A cash deposit obviously does nothing to repair your own car, and states accept it as a full substitute for the filing. That is only coherent if the obligation was never about your car.
One more clause worth knowing when you compare quotes, because it is the kind of thing insurers do not volunteer. 625 ILCS 5/7-317(l) requires an insurer to file the certificate on request and then adds: "No insurance carrier may require the payment of any extra fee or surcharge, in addition to the insurance premium, for the execution, delivery or filing of such certificate." In Illinois, a separate charge for the SR-22 filing itself is prohibited by statute. Where you are shopping, ask for the premium and any filing charge as two separate numbers, and if two quotes differ sharply, check first whether one defaulted to a full-coverage bundle and the other to liability-only — that comparison problem is the subject of how much SR-22 filings cost on average, and the state fees that sit alongside them are collected in licence reinstatement fees by state.
What I could not verify
Whether any of the fifty states requires physical-damage coverage as part of a financial-responsibility filing. We read the chapters of Texas, California, Illinois, Iowa and Florida and found liability minimums only, plus explicit language in three of them putting excess coverage outside the chapter. We did not read all fifty, so the finding is "not in these five", not "nowhere".
What your own lender's contract requires. The Illinois and Texas insurance departments state that lenders commonly require collision and comprehensive; neither is a source on your specific loan. The only authority on that is the agreement you signed, and the clause is usually headed insurance or protection of collateral.
Texas chapter 601 was read in an Internet Archive snapshot. The live page at statutes.capitol.texas.gov is a JavaScript application that returns an empty shell to a plain request, so the Texas wording quoted here comes from the archived copy of that same URL. Confirm the section numbers against the live page in a browser before relying on them. The Texas minimum limits are independently corroborated by the Texas Department of Insurance guide quoted above, which states the requirement as 30/60/25.
Whether the Illinois no-extra-fee rule has equivalents elsewhere. 625 ILCS 5/7-317(l) prohibits a carrier from charging a separate fee for filing the certificate. We did not find the same prohibition in the other four states' chapters, and we are not asserting it exists or does not exist there.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need full coverage with an SR-22?
Not because of the SR-22. The certificate proves your policy carries the state's minimum liability limits and nothing else — California's DMV states directly that "Comprehensive or collision insurance does not meet vehicle financial responsibility requirements." Three of the five statutes we read go further and place coverage above the minimum outside the financial-responsibility chapter altogether: Tex. Transp. Code § 601.078(b) says "The excess or additional coverage is not subject to this chapter." If you do need full coverage, the party requiring it is your lender, and the Illinois Department of Insurance puts it in one line: "Illinois law doesn't require physical damage coverage, but your lender may."
What are the minimum liability limits an SR-22 has to certify?
It depends entirely on the state, and the spread is threefold. Read on 2 September 2026: Texas $30,000 / $60,000 / $25,000 under Transp. Code § 601.072(a-1); California $30,000 / $60,000 / $15,000 under Veh. Code § 16451(a)(2) for policies issued or renewed from 1 January 2025; Illinois $25,000 / $50,000 / $20,000 under 625 ILCS 5/7-317(b)(3); Iowa $20,000 / $40,000 / $15,000 under Iowa Code § 321A.21(2)(b); Florida $10,000 / $20,000 / $10,000 under Fla. Stat. § 324.021(7). None of those chapters requires collision or comprehensive coverage.
Is a liability-only SR-22 legal?
Yes, provided the liability limits meet or exceed the state's minimums, because that is the only thing the certificate attests to. The Illinois Secretary of State's leaflet states the requirement as a coverage amount in three liability figures and adds only that "The insurance policy must conform with the provisions of the Illinois Vehicle Code." The cash alternatives make the same point: Illinois accepts a $70,000 deposit with the State Treasurer and Texas a $55,000 deposit with the comptroller in place of a policy, and a deposit cannot repair anybody's car.
Can I drop full coverage while my SR-22 is active?
If you own the car outright, the filing does not stand in your way — but check two things before you call. First, that the liability limits on the reduced policy still meet the state minimum the certificate has to prove, because a filing that stops matching the statute is a lapse. Second, whether a loan is still open, because the Texas Department of Insurance warns what happens then: "If you cancel or lose these coverages, your lender will buy single-interest coverage and add the cost to your loan payment. This coverage is expensive and protects only the lender." Ask your insurer to confirm in writing that the certificate remains valid after the change.
