What the Georgia Life License Covers
A Georgia Life license authorizes you to sell, solicit, and negotiate "insurance coverage on human lives including benefits of endowment and annuities" — the definition in Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 120-2-3-.06(1)(a). It is issued by the Office of Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire, the combined insurance-and-fire-safety agency headed by Georgia's elected Commissioner.
Two boundaries decide whether this is the right license for you. First, fixed and indexed annuities ride on the Life line — you need nothing extra to sell them, though you do have to complete Georgia's annuity best-interest training under Rule 120-2-94 before you make a recommendation. Second, Variable Products is a separate Georgia line of authority: Rule 120-2-3-.06(1)(e) lists it on its own, it carries its own 8-hour pre-licensing course and its own exam (12-GA-62), and it can only be added on top of an existing Life license alongside your FINRA registrations.
If there is any realistic chance you will also quote disability, Medicare supplement, or group health, price the combined Life/Accident & Sickness exam (12-GA-05) before you schedule. Georgia charges the same $67 for it, and the license fee is $120 either way — the only extra cost is a second 8-hour course.
Exam Options & Format
Georgia's Life exam is 12-GA-01, administered by Pearson VUE: 80 scored questions plus 10 unscored pretest items (90 questions presented), a 2-hour limit, and a $67 fee per attempt. The pretest items are unmarked and don't count — answer them like everything else.
The passing standard is a flat 70% of the scored questions. Georgia does not use a scaled score, and it says so twice: the handbook states "You need to answer 70% of questions correctly in order to pass," and Rule 120-2-3-.09(2) provides that "the passing grade on examinations for licenses shall be seventy percent (70%)." Fifty-six of 80 is a pass. Your result prints at the test center before you leave.
Every Georgia insurance exam is taken in person. Georgia Insurance is not on Pearson VUE's OnVUE remote-proctoring program list, and the August 2026 handbook makes no provision for it — if another site tells you that you can sit this exam at home, it is out of date. Walk-ins are not accepted either; the Property guide covers scheduling and test-center logistics in detail.
Fail it and you can rebook the next day, but you must wait 14 days to retest after the first and second attempts and 60 days after the third and every attempt thereafter. There is no cap on total attempts. One Georgia trap: under Rule 120-2-3-.09(3), a candidate who took pre-licensing through an independent provider and fails three times must take the course again from a different provider before retesting.
Most Tested Topics on the Georgia Life Exam
The content outline puts 30 of the 80 scored questions on Georgia law — 24 on laws common to Life, Accident & Sickness, and 6 on rules that apply to life insurance only. That is more than a third of the exam, and it is the block generic national prep cannot cover. Every figure below is drawn from the TESTivity Georgia regulations curriculum and verified against the O.C.G.A.:
| Concept | The Georgia rule |
|---|---|
| Free look, individual life | 10 days from receipt, full premium refund, and the policy is "void from the beginning" — O.C.G.A. § 33-25-8. It is not in the replacement regulation, which is where most study guides wrongly send you |
| Grace period | Not less than 30 days — § 33-25-3(a)(1). Georgia does not use the 31-day figure some multi-state charts show |
| Incontestability | 2 years from date of issue, except nonpayment of premium — § 33-25-3(a)(2) |
| Reinstatement | 3 years from premium default, with evidence of insurability and interest on arrears not exceeding 6% compounded annually — § 33-25-3(a)(8) |
| Suicide exclusion | 2 years from date of issue, "while sane or insane" — § 33-25-5(a)(5). Group insurance, reinsurance and annuities are excepted |
| Policy loan deferment | The insurer may defer a policy loan 6 months, unless the loan is to pay a premium — § 33-25-3 |
| Nonforfeiture options | Cash surrender value, reduced paid-up insurance, extended term insurance — § 33-25-4 |
| Life settlements | Georgia's Life Settlements Act, O.C.G.A. Ch. 33-59. The owner may rescind on or before 15 days after execution — § 33-59-11(i), with the matching disclosure duty at § 33-59-9(a)(5) |
| Annuity recommendations | Georgia adopted the NAIC best-interest standard as Rule 120-2-94, effective August 1, 2023, with a producer training requirement attached |
| Replacement duties | The agent presents the Replacement Notice "not later than at the time of taking the application," both parties sign, and the insurer furnishes a policy summary within 10 working days — Rules 120-2-24-.05 and -.06 |
| Variable products | A separate line of authority under Rule 120-2-3-.06(1)(e) — Life license first, then FINRA registration |
Two of these decide more Georgia exams than the rest combined. The first is the free look: Georgia's 10-day right to return lives in O.C.G.A. § 33-25-8, a stand-alone section titled for exactly that purpose — and it does not stretch when a policy is being replaced. Georgia never adopted the extended 20- or 30-day replacement free look that Texas uses (and that Pennsylvania applies to a different-insurer replacement, against 45 days for a same-insurer one), so a question that pairs "replacement" with a longer window is testing whether you assumed the national model applies here. It doesn't. The replacement rules in Subject 120-2-24 impose notice, signature and record duties on the agent; they create no additional return right.
The second is the reinstatement package, because Georgia writes three numbers into one provision: three years, evidence of insurability, and 6% compounded annually on the arrears. Candidates reliably remember the three-year window and miss the interest cap. Learn § 33-25-3(a)(8) as a single sentence and you pick up questions other people leave on the table.
Applying for Your Georgia License Through Sircon — Every Step
Georgia is a Sircon state, and this is the single most common place out-of-state advice goes wrong. OCI's instruction is unambiguous: "all resident applications must be submitted via Sircon.com/Georgia," and NIPR states flatly that "resident license transactions are not available through NIPR" for Georgia. There is no paper option — "all applications must be submitted electronically using our licensing system." Nonresidents are the exception and may use NIPR.
Step 1 — Finish the exam, then start the 12-month clock. Rule 120-2-3-.09(4) is the one deadline that quietly ends careers before they start: "a person who has not filed an application within twelve (12) months of the date of receiving a passing exam score will be required to retake the examination." The handbook never mentions this. Note it the day you pass.
Step 2 — Get the Citizenship Affidavit notarized before you sit down at the keyboard. Every applicant uploads a completed, notarized Citizenship Affidavit (GID-276-EN) plus a copy of the front of an acceptable identification document. OCI's warning is direct: "your license application cannot be processed until the completed and notarized affidavit along with a copy of the required identification is submitted correctly." If you use an online notary, OCI requires proof of that process with the affidavit.
Step 3 — File at sircon.com/georgia. Choose Georgia, individual resident, and the Life line of authority. Pay $120 — the total breaks down as $100 for the new license under O.C.G.A. § 33-8-1(1)(A), a $15 application fee under § 33-8-1(4), and a $5 state processing fee. That $120 is the same whether you are applying for one line or two, because the fee attaches to the license rather than to the count of lines.
Step 4 — Answer the background questions honestly, then fingerprint. This is Georgia's order-of-operations trap. IdentoGO will not process you first: OCI states that "a registration for an appointment will not be approved until after you have applied for your license." So submit the Sircon application, then go to ga.state.identogo.com/ata and register under service code 2TGJ6B. The Casualty guide walks the fingerprint process step by step — it is identical for every line.
Step 5 — Watch the 60-day deficiency window. If your packet is incomplete, OCI issues a deficiency notice; an application left incomplete "will be closed and the applicant will forfeit the license application fee" after 60 days. Upload everything the first time and this never comes up.
Step 6 — Expect roughly 14 business days. That is OCI's stated average turnaround for a complete application. When it clears, your license shows on OCI's lookup and your national producer record updates. One more Georgia step before you can actually write business: an insurer must obtain an agent's certificate of authority (the appointment) for you under O.C.G.A. § 33-23-26 — the carrier files it and pays the $10 fee, and for a first-time licensee it cannot take effect until your license is granted.
What It Costs
Georgia's fixed costs are modest and easy to pin down: $67 to Pearson VUE per exam attempt, and $120 to OCI at application ($100 license + $15 application fee + $5 processing). That is $187 in government and vendor fees for a first-time pass.
Two costs are not fixed. Your 8-hour Life pre-licensing course is priced by the provider you choose — TESTivity recommends Achievable, an OCI-approved provider whose insurance courses were built by the same subject-matter expert behind TESTivity, and completing it earns the certificate of completion Georgia requires. (Disclosure: TESTivity has a partnership with Achievable and may earn a commission if you enroll through links on this page. TESTivity itself is not an approved Georgia pre-licensing provider and does not issue certificates.) And the IdentoGO fingerprint fee is not published by OCI, by the handbook, or on IdentoGO's Georgia pages — you will see the amount when you register under service code 2TGJ6B.
Later, recurring costs: $100 to renew every two years without Variable Products ($200 with it), plus a $5 processing fee, and whatever your CE hours cost.
Eligibility Requirements
O.C.G.A. § 33-23-5(a) sets three bars. You must be at least 18. You must be "a resident of this state who shall reside and be present within this state for at least six months of every year" — Georgia writes the residency test in days present, not just address. And you must be "of good character."
That last one is why the fingerprints exist. A criminal history is not an automatic bar, but § 33-23-21 lists 22 grounds on which the Commissioner may refuse a license, and misrepresenting your history on the application is itself one of them. Disclose everything the application asks about — an undisclosed matter that surfaces in the FBI check is treated far more harshly than a disclosed one.
Active licensees and anyone reinstating within six months are exempt from re-fingerprinting; everyone else applying for a first Georgia license submits prints.
Keeping the License Active
Important CE details: 24 hours per two-year cycle including 3 hours of ethics for licensees with fewer than 20 years of service; 20 hours (still 3 ethics) once you pass 20 years, an automatic 4-hour reduction that took effect in 2026. Holders of CPCU, CLU, FLMI, CIC, CEBS, ChFC, AAI, CFP, CRM or CISR — or a BBA in risk management and insurance — need only 12 hours including 3 ethics.
Georgia agent licenses are biennial and expire on the last day of your birth month (O.C.G.A. § 33-23-18), so your first term runs anywhere from 12 to 24 months depending on when you're licensed. Continuing education is 24 hours per cycle including 3 hours of ethics, dropping to 20 hours (still 3 ethics) once you have been licensed 20 years — an automatic 4-hour reduction that began in 2026.
Two product-specific training rules ride on top of CE for life producers. Annuity best-interest training under Rule 120-2-94 is a prerequisite to recommending an annuity at all. And if you later add Accident & Sickness authority and sell long-term care partnership policies, Rule 120-2-16-.34 requires 8 hours of initial training and 4 more every 24 months on top of your CE.
Track your credits at Sircon's Compliance Express, and see the Property & Casualty guide for the full renewal mechanics — the 60-day early-renewal window, the 15-day late-renewal grace period, and what reinstatement costs after that.
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