Indiana Life Study Guide

Indiana’s life material is unusually easy to locate and unusually easy to over-answer. Almost every required policy provision sits in one statute, which is a gift. But three of Indiana’s numbers are lower than the national figures your course taught you, and one of them is not a number at all — it is a comparison. Candidates lose marks here by answering confidently with a figure they learned somewhere else.

One statute holds the required provisions

IC 27-1-12-6 carries the required provisions for individual life policies, and its numbered subsections are what the exam draws on.

The three that recur: a grace period of not less than 30 days (subsection (a)(2)). An incontestability period of two years from the date of issue, running during the insured’s lifetime (subsection (a)(3)). And reinstatement within three years of premium default, on evidence of insurability and payment of arrears with interest (subsection (a)(9)).

Note what the reinstatement provision actually requires — three things together, not one. Evidence of insurability and the overdue premiums and interest. An item that offers reinstatement on insurability alone is offering an incomplete answer.

The Standard Nonforfeiture Law lives elsewhere, at IC 27-1-12-9, and gives the familiar three: cash surrender value, reduced paid-up insurance, extended term insurance. Keep it filed separately from IC 27-1-12-6 — it is a different section and it answers a different question.

The free look is ten days

IC 27-1-12-43 gives the owner of an individual life policy 10 days to return it for a refund. National material trains candidates toward twenty or thirty, and Indiana is neither — this is one of the shortest free-look periods you will meet, and candidates lose the mark by over-answering rather than under-answering it.

Indiana’s other free-look periods are set by product rather than by a single rule, and the Life & Health chapter lays the full ladder out side by side. For the Life exam, the number to hold is the one above: ten days, from delivery, for an individual life policy.

Viatical settlements — the one Indiana rule that is a comparison

This is the highest-value item in Indiana’s life material, because it is the one place Indiana wrote a formula where every other state wrote a number.

Indiana regulates viatical and life settlements under IC 27-8-19.8. The viator’s right to rescind is at IC 27-8-19.8-21(b), and it runs for the longer of fifteen days after the viator receives the proceeds, or thirty days after the contract is executed.

Read that as an instruction to compare two dates rather than to recall one. A contract executed on 1 March that funds on 20 March gives the viator until 4 April — fifteen days from funding — because that falls after 31 March. Reverse the timeline, with a contract that funds three days after execution, and the thirty-day leg governs instead. An exam item that hands you both dates is testing exactly this; an item that offers a bare “15 days” is offering the answer most states would give.

Variable products are a different line entirely

Fixed annuities sit inside your Life line. Variable life and variable annuities do not. Indiana issues Variable Life and Variable Annuity as a separate line of authority (IC 27-1-15.6-7), and on top of the state line you need FINRA securities registration, because a variable contract is a security whatever a state licence says.

That is two credentials, not one, and a Life-only licensee who sells a variable annuity has a problem in both directions.

Annuities carry a training gate, not a CE credit

Indiana adopted the NAIC best interest standard by rule — 760 IAC 1-72, effective 1 July 2024. A producer recommending an annuity must act in the consumer’s best interest.

The practical rule attached to it is the one to memorise: a producer licensed on or after 1 July 2024 must complete a one-time four-hour course covering the best-interest standard before selling annuities in Indiana. Producers already licensed when the rule took effect owed a shorter one-hour bridge course. Neither counts toward your twenty-four continuing education hours — they are conditions on selling, not credits against a requirement.