What the Combined Life & Health Path Covers
California does not issue a single "Life and Health" license. What it offers is a single examination — Life, Accident and Health or Sickness — that under Ins. Code §1676(b) satisfies the exam requirement for both the Life line and the Accident and Health or Sickness line. You then hold two licenses, obtained through one sitting.
The economics are strongly in favour of doing it this way. One exam fee instead of two. And because CDI charges the filing fee per application rather than per line when the lines are filed together, applying for Life-Only and Accident & Health at the same time costs $188 total, not $376. Add the second line eighteen months later and you pay the second $188 in full.
A note on CDI's own pages: the older Life-Only/A&H FAQ reads as though separate examinations are required for the two lines. The statute and the current Candidate Information Bulletin — which lists a single 150-question Life, Accident and Health or Sickness exam — both provide for the combined sitting. Follow the bulletin.
For the 12-hour Code & Ethics course California still requires before your license is issued, TESTivity recommends Achievable. The Achievable insurance courses were built by the same subject-matter expert behind TESTivity, so the two are designed to work together.
One important distinction: TESTivity is not an approved pre-licensing provider in California and does not issue certificates of completion. The TESTivity learning tools and study packages will absolutely help you pass the exam — but treat them as a supplement to your Achievable course, not a substitute for it.
Disclosure: TESTivity has a partnership with Achievable and may earn a commission if you enroll through links on this page.
Exam Options & Format
The combined exam is 150 questions in 195 minutes — three hours and fifteen minutes — passing at 60%. That is a genuinely long sitting, and it is the one California producer exam where stamina is a real variable. Plan your pacing: 195 minutes across 150 questions is about 78 seconds each, and the bulletin's one-to-ten unscored experimental items eat into that.
Split instead into two 75-question exams and you get 105 minutes each — a slightly more generous 84 seconds per question — at the cost of a second exam fee, a second appointment, and a second $188 filing if you do not file them together.
There is no partial credit across the combined exam: it is one score against one 60% standard. You do not pass "the life half." If you fail, you retake the whole thing — though California imposes no waiting period between retakes, so the next available appointment is genuinely the next available appointment.
Delivery format — PSI test center, CDI's Los Angeles site, or live remote proctor — is chosen at registration. The Accident & Health guide covers remote testing in detail.
Most Tested Topics on the California Life & Health Exam
The combined exam draws on both content areas, but its distinctly Californian points cluster in two places: the guaranty association, whose limits California expresses differently from every NAIC-standard state, and the free-look ladder, which is layered rather than a single number.
| Concept | The California rule |
|---|---|
| Life & health guaranty association | California Life and Health Insurance Guarantee Association (CLHIGA), §1067 et seq. |
| How the limits are written | The LESSER of 80% of the contractual obligation OR the dollar cap — California uses a percentage-with-a-cap, not a flat dollar amount |
| Death benefit limit | The lesser of 80% or $300,000 (§1067.02(c)) |
| Cash surrender / withdrawal value | The lesser of 80% or $100,000 |
| Annuity limit | The lesser of 80% or $250,000 present value; structured settlement annuity $250,000 |
| Health benefit limit | The lesser of 80% or $200,000, CPI-indexed from 1 January 1991 — lower than the $500,000 many states now use |
| Aggregate cap | $300,000 for any one life, life and annuity combined; $5,000,000 for one owner of multiple non-group life policies (§1067.02(d)) |
| Guaranty association in marketing | Prohibited — you may not use the existence of either association in advertising or to induce a purchase (§1067.17 life/health; §1063.15 P&C) |
| Free look, replacement | 30 days when a policy or annuity replaces existing coverage (§10127.10) |
| Free look, senior annuity | 30 days if the owner is 60 or older — California's senior trigger is 60, not 65 (§10127.10) |
| Free look, long-term care | 30 days (§10232.7); Medicare supplement also 30 days (§10192.13) |
| CE per term | 24 hours including 3 ethics, one ethics hour on insurance fraud — and it does not double for holding both lines (§1749.3) |
The guaranty limits are where the marks are, because California genuinely does not follow the model act. A candidate who memorised "$300,000 death benefit" from a national outline will answer a question about a $250,000 policy with "$250,000 is covered" — but California pays the lesser of 80% or $300,000, which on a $250,000 policy is $200,000. The percentage comes first; the cap is a ceiling on top of it.
The second reliable point is that California's senior trigger is age 60, not the 65 used in Arizona and much of the country. The 30-day annuity free look, and the extra scrutiny that comes with senior suitability, switch on at 60. And note the rule that follows from §1067.17: you may not mention the guaranty association to help make a sale — a question describing a producer reassuring a nervous client that "the state fund backs this anyway" is describing a violation.
California Prelicensing Education — What AB 943 Changed
This is the most consequential recent change in California producer licensing, and most of the internet has not caught up with it. Assembly Bill 943 (Rodriguez), Chapter 566, Statutes of 2025, signed 10 October 2025, repealed California's 20-hour prelicensing education requirement for insurance producers effective 1 January 2026. If a page tells you that a California life applicant needs 20, 32, 40, or 52 hours of coursework, that page is describing the law as it stood in 2025.
The repeal covers property, casualty, commercial lines, personal lines, limited lines automobile, life, and accident and health or sickness. Bail agents and public insurance adjusters are not covered — they still owe their 20 hours.
What remains: the 12-hour course. Every producer applicant must complete 12 Hours of Study on Ethics and the California Insurance Code (Ins. Code §1749), and one of those twelve hours must cover insurance fraud. That is the whole prelicensing requirement now.
It is the same 12 for every line, and you only take it once. There is no per-line variation any more and no extra hours for a combined license. Section 1749(f) is explicit: an applicant seeking more than one of property broker-agent and casualty broker-agent, personal lines broker-agent, life-only, or accident and health "shall only be required to complete one 12-hour course on ethics and this code." One course, one certificate, every line you are filing for.
The timing is the counterintuitive part. The 12-hour course is a condition of issuance, not of examination. CDI's prelicensing FAQ says the course "must be completed before the individual's license can be issued" and that it is "not a requirement to be authorized to schedule and take the insurance license examination." Be aware that some of CDI's individual qualification pages still say "before taking the license examination" — the two CDI pages contradict each other. The practical reading: you may sit the exam first, but do not let the course drift, because your passing score expires twelve months from the pass date and it is measured to the date the license issues.
Certificates expire. A prelicensing certificate of completion is good for three years from the completion date, whether or not a license is issued (§1749(l)). Take the course, change your mind, come back in four years — you take it again.
Providers must be CDI-approved. From 1 January 2026 the Department only accepts prelicensing courses for the 12-hour ethics and Code requirement plus the bail agent and public insurance adjuster 20-hour courses. Legacy 20-hour producer courses were inactivated on 12 January 2026. CDI runs a searchable course list, and completions are reported by the provider — you do not upload the certificate yourself.
One group cannot skip it. A licensed producer from another state who moves to California and qualifies for the §1675 examination waiver still has to complete the 12-hour course before a California resident license will issue. The waiver is for the exam, not the ethics course.
Exam Day in California — Check-in, ID and the Rules
Bring ONE ID — and know that this is unusual. California requires "one form of identification (ID)... a valid form of government-issued ID with a photograph and a signature." Most states demand two. Do not copy generic two-ID advice from a national study forum into your California preparation; you need one, and it must carry both a photograph and a signature.
What counts at a test center: driver's licence from any state, California ID card, passport or passport card, military ID, employment authorization document, permanent resident card, or a Veteran Health ID with a photograph. What counts for remote testing is narrower — and notably an out-of-state ID card is not accepted, though an out-of-state driver's licence is. The Accident & Health guide covers the remote path in detail.
Arrive 30 minutes early. The bulletin is unambiguous: "you must arrive at least 30 minutes prior to your scheduled examination time." At a test center you will be photographed before admittance, and that photo becomes part of your exam record.
Rescheduling: two business days, and only by phone or website. You may cancel and reschedule without forfeiting your fee if the cancellation notice reaches PSI at least two business days before the appointment. Call (833) 518-7456 or use the website — the bulletin states that "a voicemail or email message is NOT an acceptable form of cancellation." One caveat worth knowing: CDI's own rescheduling web page says "at least 48 hours" instead. Two business days is both the stricter reading and the one in the current bulletin, so work to that. Two business days before a Monday exam means the previous Thursday, not Saturday.
Prohibited items, in the bulletin's own terms: "Cell phones, calculators, pagers, cameras, smart watches or glasses, wrist watches, ear buds, recording devices, and electronic devices of any kind are NOT allowed in the examination room." Note wrist watches on that list — an ordinary analogue watch is prohibited, and the on-screen timer is your only clock. No weapons. No smoking, eating, gum chewing or drinking. No "dictionaries, books, papers, or study and reference materials." At a test center, no purse, backpack or wallet comes into the room with you.
You may not leave the building or the exam area during the exam. Plan accordingly for a 195-minute combined sitting — there is no scheduled break, and the clock does not stop.
Results. Pass or fail appears on screen the moment you finish, and a score report follows by email. There is no waiting period before you may book a retake; the only limit is §1682's cap of ten examinations of the same type in any twelve-month period. The Personal Lines guide covers score reporting, retake strategy and validity in full.
What It Costs
The combined route is the cheapest way into both lines: about $98 for one exam ($55 CDI + $43 PSI, or $55 flat at CDI's Los Angeles site), $188 in filing fees covering both licenses when filed together, and $74 for fingerprints — roughly $360 all in, plus the 12-hour Ethics and Code course.
The separate route costs about $98 twice for the exams and, unless the two applications are filed at the same time, $188 twice for the licenses. Filing fees are non-refundable under §1751.5 whether or not the application is acted upon.
Eligibility Requirements
Minimum age 18, fingerprints through the California DOJ and FBI, and the 12-hour Ethics and Code course before issuance. California residency is not a condition of holding a California license, though you may designate only one state as your resident state (§1638).
Nothing about the combined exam changes the eligibility rules — the requirements are identical whichever way you sit for the two lines.
Keeping Both Licenses Active
Important CE details: One 24-hour block per two-year term covers every producer license you hold — it does not double because you carry both life and health authority. Three of the 24 must be ethics, one of those on insurance fraud.
Holding two producer licenses does not mean two CE obligations. CDI is explicit that the 24 hours may be completed in courses applicable to any of the license types held — one 24-hour block per two-year term, including 3 hours of ethics with one hour on insurance fraud, covers both.
The term itself runs two years from the issue date, expiring the last day of that calendar month. Because you filed both lines together, both expire together — which is the tidy outcome, and the reason to file together rather than add a line later.
Two product gates sit outside the 24-hour count in practice even though the hours credit toward it. Annuities need 8 hours of California annuity training before you solicit any sale, then 4 hours each renewal. Long-term care needs 8 hours in each of your first four 12-month periods, then 8 before each renewal. Between them, a producer selling both products in year one is doing considerably more than 24 hours. The P&C guide covers the renewal transaction, the late-renewal window and carryover.
Quick Reference
Official Links
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