Louisiana Life Study Guide

Louisiana’s life material is concentrated in one statute and two settlement rules, which makes it unusually tractable — but it hides a number where most states do not, and it splits a rescission right between two different people. Both are places a candidate who studied a national outline will answer confidently and wrongly.

One statute carries the required provisions

La. R.S. 22:931 holds the required provisions for life policies, and its lettered subsections are what the exam draws on.

A grace period of 30 days — one month (subsection (A)(1)). An incontestability period of two years from the date of issue, running during the insured’s lifetime (subsection (A)(2)). And reinstatement within three years of premium default, on evidence of insurability and payment of overdue premiums (subsection (A)(9)).

So far, so ordinary. Now the part Louisiana adds.

The 6% that lives inside the reinstatement rule

Read subsection (A)(9) to the end. Overdue premiums on reinstatement bear interest not exceeding 6% per year, compounded annually.

Most states stop at “payment of arrears.” Louisiana caps what the insurer may charge for the privilege, and it puts a number on it. That number is the single most testable thing in R.S. 22:931, precisely because it sits at the tail of a provision candidates skim as a bare deadline.

Learn the reinstatement rule as three things and a rate: three years, evidence of insurability, payment of arrears, at not more than 6% compounded annually.

Suicide runs on the contestability clock

R.S. 22:931(B)(1)(c) sets the suicide exclusion at up to two years from the date of issue. After that, suicide is no defence to the claim.

Two years and two years — the suicide period and the incontestability period match in Louisiana. That is convenient to remember and worth confirming rather than assuming, because plenty of states set a one-year suicide clause against a two-year contestability period, and an item offering “one year” is offering that other state’s answer.

The Standard Nonforfeiture Law sits separately at R.S. 22:933 and gives the familiar three: cash surrender value, reduced paid-up insurance, extended term insurance.

Variable products — the gate is federal, not state

Fixed annuities sit inside your Life line. Variable life and variable annuities do not.

Louisiana issues Variable Life and Variable Annuity as a separate line of authority under R.S. 22:1546 — and here Louisiana does something genuinely unusual. That line requires no state examination at all. What it requires is your FINRA securities registration, because a variable contract is a security whatever a state licence says.

So the sequence differs from the pattern you may have learned elsewhere. In most states the state exam is the first gate and FINRA the second. In Louisiana there is no state exam on this line — the only real gate is the federal one.

Viatical settlements — two clocks, two people

This is the highest-value item in Louisiana’s life material, because it protects two different parties on two different timetables and exam writers move between them.

Louisiana regulates viatical and life settlements under the Louisiana Viatical Settlements Act, R.S. 22:1791 et seq.

The viator — the policyowner selling their coverage — may rescind for at least 15 calendar days from receipt of the proceeds (R.S. 22:1798(C)).

The viatical purchaser — the investor buying into the settlement — holds a separate three-day right.

Fifteen days for the person selling their policy; three days for the person buying in. An item that hands you an investor and asks about a fifteen-day window is testing whether you noticed there are two parties here, not one.

Annuities carry a training gate, and it travels

Louisiana adopted the NAIC best interest standard by Regulation 89, effective 20 September 2024. A producer recommending an annuity must act in the consumer’s best interest.

The training attached is a one-time four-hour course, required before selling annuity products for anyone newly licensed for Life authority on or after that date. It does not count toward your 24 continuing education hours — it is a condition on selling.

One genuinely useful feature: the requirement is reciprocal. If you have already completed annuity best-interest training to meet the standards of any state, Louisiana treats its requirement as satisfied. A producer moving in from Texas or Mississippi does not repeat the course.