Life and Health in Delaware — Two Exams, One Fee Day
Let us be precise, because most published guidance is not: Delaware has no combined Life & Health examination. Pearson VUE's Delaware content outlines contain a Life exam and an Accident and Health exam and nothing that merges them, and 18 Del. C. §1707(a) lists Life and Accident and Health as separate lines of authority. If a course provider offers you a "Delaware Life & Health exam prep", they are preparing you for two exams.
But Delaware makes the pair unusually cheap. The handbook: "Candidates scheduling more than one (major line) exam in the same day will pay only one examination fee (excluding Personal Lines)." Book Life and Accident & Health for the same day and you pay $90 once, not twice. Both lines can then sit on one $125 producer licence, and the application, the criminal history check and the licence fee are all single events.
So the honest comparison is this. Doing both lines together in Delaware: $90 exam, $85 background, $125 licence — about $300 for two lines of authority. Doing them a year apart: $90 twice, and $50 for the additional line of authority on top of the original $125.
And there is no coursework at all. Delaware requires no pre-licensing education from anyone — its own FAQ says so in a single sentence, and Pearson VUE's handbook confirms the Department "does not require a specific program of pre-licensing education or otherwise pre-screen examination candidates." For a candidate pursuing two lines, that absence is worth more than the fee concession.
Exam Options & Format
Each exam comes in two portions, so sitting both lines means clearing four portions in one day if you take the same-day route.
Life: General Knowledge 50 scored (+5 pretest), State Specific 40 scored (+6 pretest) — 90 scored. Accident & Health: General Knowledge 50 scored (+5), State Specific 42 scored (+13) — 92 scored. Together: 182 scored questions and 211 items delivered. That is a long day, and worth being realistic about.
Scoring is scaled from 0 to 100, not a raw percentage, with a passing cut of 70 on some exams and 80 on others that the Department does not map publicly. Prepare to a standard of 80 and the ambiguity resolves itself. The Accident & Health guide covers scoring and portion retakes in detail.
Splitting the days costs $90 and buys recovery time. There is no rule requiring both exams in one sitting, and no deadline linking them. If 182 questions in a day is more than you want to attempt, the second $90 is a reasonable price for arriving fresh — particularly since a failed portion must be re-passed within one year of passing its partner, so a rushed failure has its own cost.
Time limits are not published in any primary Delaware source; the handbook places them on its back cover, which is not in the machine-readable text. If you are planning a two-exam day, check that back cover first — it is the one piece of information that determines whether the plan is realistic.
Most Tested Topics Across the Delaware Life & Health Exams
The material that spans both exams sits in the guaranty association and the free-look rules — and Delaware's guaranty limits are worth learning as a tiered set rather than a single number:
| Concept | The Delaware rule |
|---|---|
| Life & health guaranty association | Delaware Life and Health Insurance Guaranty Association (§4401 et seq.) |
| Life death benefit | $300,000 (§4403(c)(2)) |
| Net cash surrender value | $100,000 — a separate, lower bucket from the death benefit |
| Annuity present value | $250,000 |
| Health benefit plan | $500,000 |
| Disability income | $300,000 |
| Long-term care | $300,000 |
| Other health benefits | $100,000 |
| Aggregate per life | $300,000, except up to $500,000 where health benefit plan coverage is involved |
| Follows the NAIC model? | Yes — standard model limits, with the tiered health structure |
| Sales-inducement prohibition | Prohibited for property & casualty (§4419); the life & health act carves that section out |
| Free look on a replacement | 20 days to return a replaced life policy or annuity (Regulation 1204 §7.4) |
| Free look, long-term care | 30 days (§7105(f)); Medicare supplement also 30 days (§3406) |
| CE per biennium | 24 hours including 3 ethics — and it does not double for holding both lines (18 Del. Admin. C. §504) |
| CE carryover | Up to 5 credits into the next biennium, and never for the ethics hours |
The health tiering is where the marks are, because Delaware does not use one health number — it uses four. A health benefit plan is covered to $500,000; disability income and long-term care each to $300,000; and other health benefits only to $100,000. Candidates who memorise "$500,000 health" will answer a long-term care question with the wrong figure. Learn the ladder.
Note too that the death benefit and the cash surrender value are separate buckets in Delaware — $300,000 and $100,000 respectively — where some states combine them under one ceiling. And the sales-inducement prohibition is asymmetric: it applies to the property and casualty association under §4419, while the life and health act carves that section out. That asymmetry is unusual enough to be tested, and the intuitive answer ("you may never mention a guaranty association") is not Delaware's.
Exam Day in Delaware — Identification, Arrival and the Rules
Bring TWO forms of identification. This is the Delaware rule most likely to cost someone their appointment, because plenty of states ask for one. The handbook: "Candidate must present two (2) forms of current signature identification. The primary identification must be government-issued and photo-bearing with a signature, and the secondary identification must contain a valid signature."
Primary examples: a driver's licence, a passport, a military ID. Secondary examples: a Social Security card, a credit or debit card. The secondary does not need a photograph — it needs a signature. A bank card you have never signed on the back will not do the job.
Make sure the name matches. Pearson VUE's Delaware page is explicit: "Please VERIFY that you have created your web account with your LEGAL name as it appears on your government-issued ID." A booking under a shortened first name, a maiden name, or a name without a middle initial that appears on your licence is a real and avoidable reason to be turned away.
Arrive 30 minutes early. "Candidates should report to the test center thirty (30) minutes before the examination." If you are sitting two exams in one day under the same-day fee concession, build in more than that — check-in is a per-visit process, not a per-exam one, but you will want the margin.
Book at least 24 hours ahead. "Candidates must make an online reservation at least twenty-four (24) hours before the desired examination date." Online reservations run 24 hours a day, and Pearson VUE's Delaware page confirms appointments may be made up to one calendar day before you wish to test, subject to availability. There is no walk-in option in Delaware.
Cancelling or rescheduling: 48 hours, by phone. "Candidates should call (800) 274-0455 at least forty-eight (48) hours before the examination to change or cancel a reservation." Do it in time and you may transfer the fee to a new reservation or request a refund. Do it late — or not at all — and "candidates who change or cancel a reservation without proper notice will forfeit the examination fee." The same applies if you are simply late: "candidates absent from or late to an exam who have not changed or canceled the reservation according to the Change/Cancel Policy will not be admitted to the exam and will forfeit the exam fee." There is a process for requesting an excused absence within a short window after the fact, but treat it as an exception rather than a plan.
Nothing comes into the room with you. "No personal items are allowed in the testing room. Personal items include but are not limited to: cellular phones, hand-held computers or other electronic devices, pagers, watches, wallets, purses, firearms or other weapons, hats, bags, coats, books, and/or notes, pens, or pencils." Note watches and coats on that list — two things people wear rather than carry, and therefore two things people forget to leave behind.
Accommodations. Pearson VUE "complies with the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act as amended", and a separate ESL request form is published and linked from the Delaware page for candidates whose first language is not English. Both are arranged in advance of the appointment, not on the day.
Afterwards. You receive a score report marked pass or fail before you leave, and a passing report includes information on how to apply for the licence. The Accident & Health guide covers results, portion retakes and the twelve-month validity clock.
What It Costs
About $300 for both lines, if you sit the two exams on the same day: $90 once for the pair, roughly $85 for the combined state and FBI criminal history report, and $125 for the producer licence through NIPR, plus NIPR's transaction fee.
Split across two days, add a second $90. Add the second line months later instead and it is $50 for the additional line of authority on top of whatever you have already paid.
The number that is missing is the interesting one: there is no pre-licensing tuition. In a state requiring 20 hours a line, two lines of coursework would typically cost more than every fee on this page combined. Delaware requires none.
Eligibility Requirements
Minimum age 18, a Delaware address for resident applicants, and no active Delaware nonresident licence held at the same time. No education requirement, no experience requirement, no sponsorship.
Both lines go on one application, through one criminal history check — the state and FBI reports are not duplicated per line. The Life guide walks the application sequence; the Casualty guide covers the background check.
Keeping Both Lines Active
Important CE details: Resident adjusters, public adjusters and fraternal agents sit on a lighter 12-hour requirement — but their 3 ethics hours are the same three, so ethics makes up a quarter of an adjuster's cycle against an eighth of a producer's.
Holding both Life and Accident & Health does not double your continuing education. Delaware sets 24 credit hours per biennium including 3 hours of ethics for the producer licence as a whole (18 Del. Admin. C. §504), on a fixed cycle running 1 March to the last day of February of an even-numbered year.
Two product gates apply once you carry these lines. Annuities need the one-time 4-credit best-interest course under Regulation 1214 before you may sell them, plus insurer product-specific training for each annuity you recommend. Long-term care needs 3 hours of Delaware LTC training in each biennium in which you solicit it.
Carryover is capped and lopsided: up to 5 excess credits move forward one biennium, and carryover never applies to the ethics hours — you take three every cycle regardless of how far ahead you got last time. The P&C guide covers the renewal transaction, the fixed 28 February deadline and what happens if you miss it.
Quick Reference
Official Links
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