What the Georgia Accident & Sickness License Covers
Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 120-2-3-.06(1)(b) defines the line as "insurance coverage for sickness, bodily injury or accidental death" — major medical, disability income, Medicare supplement, long-term care, dental, vision, critical illness, and the group products that go with them. Georgia's statutory name for it is Accident and Sickness; if you have been studying from national material that says "Health," it is the same license.
Two Georgia realities shape what this license is worth in the field. Georgia runs its own state-based exchange, Georgia Access, live since plan year 2025 and built deliberately around agent-assisted enrollment — OCI designed it so consumers can enroll "through an extensive network of certified agents" and enhanced direct enrollment partners. And Georgia has not taken full ACA Medicaid expansion; it runs Pathways to Coverage, a §1115 demonstration covering adults up to 100% of the federal poverty level who complete 80 qualifying hours a month. Both facts show up on the exam and in every real conversation with a client.
If you also sell life products or annuities, compare this against the combined 12-GA-05 exam before you schedule — same $67, same $120 license fee, one extra 8-hour course.
Exam Options & Format
The Accident & Sickness exam is 12-GA-02: 80 scored questions plus 10 unscored pretest items, 2 hours, $67 per attempt, and a flat 70% to pass. Georgia scores raw, not scaled — 56 correct of 80 passes, and you get the result before you leave the test center.
The scored questions split like this, straight from the content outline: Types of policies 16 · Policy provisions, clauses and riders 15 · Social insurance 6 · Other insurance concepts 5 · Field underwriting procedures 8 · Georgia laws for Life, Accident & Sickness 24 · Georgia rules for Accident & Sickness only 6. That is 30 of 80 on Georgia law — the single largest block, and bigger than types of policies and provisions put together.
All Georgia insurance exams are in-person at Pearson VUE test centers. There is no OnVUE remote option for this program, and walk-ins are not accepted — book at least a day ahead. Retake rules: 14 days after the first and second failures, 60 days after the third and beyond, no cap on attempts, $67 each time.
Most Tested Topics on the Georgia Accident & Sickness Exam
Georgia's health law diverges from the NAIC baseline in specific, numeric ways — which is exactly what makes it testable. These are drawn from the TESTivity Georgia regulations curriculum, each verified against the code or rule:
| Concept | The Georgia rule |
|---|---|
| A&S grace period | Tiered by premium mode: 7 days weekly, 10 days monthly, 30 days for all others — O.C.G.A. § 33-29-3 |
| Time limit on certain defenses | 2 years from issue; after that, absent fraud, no misstatement in the application voids the policy or denies a claim — § 33-29-3 |
| Notice of claim | 20 days after the occurrence or commencement of loss, or as soon as reasonably possible — § 33-29-3 |
| Proof of loss | 90 days — § 33-29-3 |
| Prompt pay, clean claims | 15 working days for electronic claims, 30 calendar days for paper — § 33-24-59.5(b) |
| Prompt pay penalty | 12% per year interest on overdue clean claims, plus administrative penalties below 95% quarterly compliance — § 33-24-59.5(c),(d) |
| State continuation | Requires 6 months of prior continuous coverage; runs the remainder of the month plus 3 policy months, at the active-group rate — § 33-24-21.1 |
| Continuation, age 60+ | The separate § 33-24-21.2 extension, capped at 120% of the group rate — this is where the 120% figure lives, not in § 33-24-21.1 |
| External review | An Independent Review Organization decision favorable to the enrollee is binding on the insurer; expedited decisions within 72 hours — § 33-20A-30 et seq. |
| Autism (Ava's Law) | Coverage for individuals 20 years of age or under, with an optional $35,000 per year limit on applied behavior analysis — § 33-24-59.10(b) |
| Medicare supplement free look | 30 days — Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 120-2-8-.17(1)(e) |
| Medicare supplement open enrollment | 6 months, beginning the first month the individual is both 65 or older and enrolled in Part B — Rule 120-2-8-.11. Georgia has no birthday rule |
| Long-term care free look | 30 days — O.C.G.A. § 33-42-6(f) |
| Programs by name | Exchange: Georgia Access (state-based, since PY2025) · CHIP: PeachCare for Kids · Medicaid demonstration: Pathways to Coverage |
The continuation math is where Georgia punishes memorized national answers hardest. Georgia's mini-COBRA is not 18 months and not 36 — it is the fraction of the month remaining plus three policy months, and it requires the employee to have been continuously covered for at least six months before termination. The premium is charged at the same rate as active group members, not at 102% or 120%. The 120% figure that appears on so many multi-state charts belongs to a different statute — § 33-24-21.2, the extension for members age 60 and older and for divorced or surviving spouses, which runs open-ended until a terminating event. If a question gives you an age or a 120% number, it is pointing at .21.2; if it gives you three months, it is .21.1.
The other reliable trap is prompt pay, because Georgia counts in two different units in the same sentence: working days for electronic claims, calendar days for paper. Fifteen working days is close to three weeks; thirty calendar days is about four. A question that says "electronic" and offers "15 calendar days" is testing whether you read the unit.
Georgia's Exam and Pre-Licensing Waivers — Who Skips What
Most states will waive a pre-licensing course for a designation holder. Georgia goes further and waives the examination itself, and it publishes the list. If you hold one of these credentials, you may not have to test at all — and almost nobody outside Georgia knows it.
Exam waivers — Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 120-2-3-.09. For an agent license in life or accident & sickness, the designations that waive the exam are CLU and FLMI. For property and casualty, it is CPCU. For a Counselor license: CIC, AAI, REBC, CPCU, CLU, or FLMI. For a Limited Health Counselor license: CIC, CLU, FLMI, REBC, or RHU — or five years of prior experience as an accident & sickness agent. On the claims side, CWCP waives the workers' compensation adjuster exam and UCC waives the adjuster exam. The rule also exempts holders of a Ph.D. in Risk Management, salaried adjuster employees of insurers, temporary-license applicants, credit insurance applicants, and persons previously licensed in another state who apply within 90 days of that license's cancellation while in good standing.
Pre-licensing exemptions — Rule 120-2-3-.07(5). A separate and slightly broader list. For property/casualty lines: CPCU, CIC, CISR, or CRM. For life and health lines: CLU or FLMI. Also exempt: temporary license applicants; credit insurance agent applicants; anyone who has completed two college or university insurance courses related to the lines applied for; holders of a college degree in insurance; applicants qualifying under O.C.G.A. § 33-23-5(a)(5)(A) and (B); and "other applicants as the Commissioner at his discretion may determine."
Read the two lists together and the practical shape is this. A CLU or FLMI applying for Accident & Sickness clears both hurdles — no 8-hour course, no 12-GA-02 exam. A CISR or CRM holder gets the course waived for property and casualty lines but still sits the exam, because CISR and CRM appear on the pre-licensing list and not the examination list. That asymmetry is deliberate and it is easy to misread in either direction, so check which list your letters are on before you assume anything.
How to claim one. Waivers are not automatic. Attach evidence of the designation, degree, or prior licensure to the Sircon application and expect OCI to verify it — a designation that has lapsed is not a designation. If OCI disagrees with your reading, the fallback is simply the ordinary path: an 8-hour course, then the exam.
On the CE side, the same designations return as a reduction rather than a waiver: CPCU, CLU, FLMI, CIC, CEBS, ChFC, AAI, CFP, CRM, CISR, or a BBA in risk management and insurance cuts the biennial requirement from 24 hours to 12, still including 3 hours of ethics, filed on Form GID-101E-AL. And a separate statutory exemption at O.C.G.A. § 33-23-18 reaches individuals licensed 10 or more consecutive years who perform no underwriting functions and only receive commissions.
One waiver Georgia does not offer: there is no way around the fingerprint background check for a first Georgia license, no matter what you hold. The only fingerprint exemptions are for currently active licensees and for reinstatements within six months. Producers moving in from another state are the exception worth knowing — the Property & Casualty guide covers that 90-day letter-of-clearance path, which does skip prints.
What It Costs
$67 per exam attempt to Pearson VUE and $120 to OCI at application ($100 license + $15 application fee + $5 processing) — $187 fixed for a first-time pass.
Variable on top of that: the 8-hour Accident & Sickness pre-licensing course, priced by the provider (TESTivity recommends Achievable, an OCI-approved provider that issues the certificate Georgia requires — disclosure: TESTivity has a partnership with Achievable and may earn a commission on enrollments through this page), and the IdentoGO fingerprint fee, which Georgia does not publish and which you will see when you register under service code 2TGJ6B.
If a waiver applies, both variable costs shrink: CLU and FLMI holders skip the course and the exam, leaving the $120 application and fingerprints.
Eligibility Requirements
Be at least 18, be "a resident of this state who shall reside and be present within this state for at least six months of every year," and be "of good character" — the three conditions in O.C.G.A. § 33-23-5(a).
Georgia backs the character requirement with an FBI-level fingerprint check and with § 33-23-21's list of 22 grounds for refusing, suspending or revoking a license. Disclose criminal history on the application; the undisclosed matter is what sinks applications, not the matter itself.
Every new applicant also uploads a notarized Citizenship Affidavit (GID-276-EN) with a copy of acceptable ID. The Life guide walks the full Sircon application step by step.
Keeping the License Active
Important CE details: 24 hours per two-year cycle including 3 hours of ethics under 20 years of licensure; 20 hours (3 ethics) at 20+ years. Designation holders — CPCU, CLU, FLMI, CIC, CEBS, ChFC, AAI, CFP, CRM, CISR, or a BBA in risk management and insurance — need only 12 hours including 3 ethics, filed on Form GID-101E-AL.
Georgia licenses run two years and expire on the last day of your birth month. CE is 24 hours per cycle with 3 hours of ethics, falling to 20 hours (3 ethics) at 20 years of licensure — an automatic reduction that took effect in 2026. Credits are filed and tracked through Sircon's Compliance Express.
Excess credits carry forward exactly one period and no further, capped at 50% of the biennial requirement. Carried-forward ethics hours count toward the total but may not be used to satisfy the next cycle's ethics requirement — a distinction worth reading twice before you overload one year.
Health producers pick up one extra training obligation Georgia treats separately from CE: if you sell long-term care partnership policies, Rule 120-2-16-.34 requires 8 hours of initial training plus 4 hours every 24 months thereafter, and the insurer must verify it before letting you sell. The Property & Casualty guide covers renewal mechanics — the 60-day window, the 15-day late grace period, and reinstatement.
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