Kansas Life Study Guide

About thirty-four of the eighty-four scored questions on the Kansas Life exam are Kansas law, and they sit in one Kansas-section score that must clear 70% on its own — the national section cannot carry it. The good news is that Kansas concentrates the life material more tightly than almost any other state. Nearly every required policy provision lives in a single statute, and almost everything else lives in two regulations.

One statute holds the required provisions

K.S.A. 40-420, headed “Contents of insurance policy,” carries thirteen numbered subsections, and they are the required provisions. Most states scatter these across an article; Kansas does not. Learn the section number and you have the block.

The numbers inside it: a grace period of not less than 30 days (subsection 1). An incontestability period of two years — the policy is “incontestable after it has been in force during the lifetime of the insured for a period of not more than two years from its date,” excepting fraud and military or naval service in time of war (subsection 2). Misstatement of age adjusts, never voids — “the amount payable under the policy shall be such as the premium would have purchased at the correct age” (subsection 3). And reinstatement within three years of default, on evidence of insurability satisfactory to the company and payment of arrears (subsection 9).

Two interest ceilings hide in the same section and get swapped constantly. Reinstatement arrears bear interest “at the rate of not exceeding 6% per annum payable annually” (subsection 9). A policy loan is capped at 8% (subsection 5). Six to reinstate, eight to borrow.

Suicide — the trap where the intuitive answer is right for the wrong reason

Two years is what a Kansas life policy will say. But Kansas has no statutory suicide clause. Suicide is not among the thirteen required provisions of K.S.A. 40-420, and no other Kansas statute imposes a suicide period on individual life insurance. The two-year clause consumers see is standard policy language.

This matters because of how the question is usually written. If an item asks which Kansas statute sets the suicide period, the honest answer is that none does. File § 40-420 under required provisions — grace, incontestability, misstatement of age, reinstatement — and keep suicide filed separately as contract language.

The free look, and where you may hand the policy back

K.A.R. 40-2-15 gives the purchaser at least 10 days from delivery to return the contract for a refund. Despite the regulation’s title — “Individual life insurance policies” — it reaches annuity contracts too, including variable products, which refund market value rather than premium. So there is no separate Kansas annuity free-look rule to learn.

The detail Kansas spells out and many states leave silent: the policy may be returned to the insurer’s home or branch office OR to the agent through whom it was purchased. An item that offers “only to the home office” is testing that clause.

Replacement — written as a choice, not a command

K.A.R. 40-2-12 is the signature Kansas life question, and candidates lose it because they read it as one rule instead of two options. The replacing insurer must notify the existing insurer within three working days. Then it must delay issuing the policy for 20 days — unless the contract gives the buyer an unconditional refund of all premiums within 20 days after delivery.

Those are alternatives. Carriers almost universally take the second path, which is why producers experience a 20-day free look on replacements against the ordinary 10 on new business. An exam item that hands you both a delay and a refund window is checking whether you know they are not cumulative. Replacement records are kept at least three years, or until the conclusion of the next regular Departmental examination.

Annuities — best interest, and a course that sits outside your CE

K.A.R. 40-1-53 brought Kansas onto the NAIC best-interest standard effective 1 January 2024, and revoked K.A.R. 40-2-14a the same day. Anyone selling annuities completes a one-time four-credit training course — and that course sits outside the 18 continuing education hours, not inside them. Producers who already held a life line when the regulation took effect had six months to comply.

One more conduct point worth carrying: rebating is an enumerated unfair trade practice, at K.S.A. 40-2404(8), one of sixteen categories in that section.