The Maryland Life Producer License
Maryland issues one producer licence that can carry any of six lines of authority - Life, Health, Property, Casualty, Personal Lines and Variable Life and Annuity Products (Ins. § 10-103). The Life line is one of them, and Maryland prints a real single-line paper for it: Life Producer, exam code 2027, Series 20-27. You are not obliged to sit the combined Life and Accident and Health or Sickness paper to get it.
Annuities ride on this licence. Fixed annuities are sold under the Life line, which is why the annuity suitability rules in COMAR 31.09.12 and the one-time training in MIA Bulletin 22-11 are your problem and not the Health guide's. Variable Life and Annuity Products is a separate line that sits on top of the Life licence and requires FINRA registration - it is not quietly included.
The entry list is short, and shorter than it used to be. Be 18 (Ins. § 10-104). Pass the Life exam. Apply and pay $54. There is no coursework step: Maryland repealed pre-licensing education effective October 1, 2024 under HB 265 / SB 336, and MIA Bulletin 24-19 says applicants "will no longer be required to complete a program of study that has been established or approved by the Commissioner, nor meet minimum experience requirements prior to taking the examination." The exam requirement survives the repeal; only the classroom hours went.
One structural point that matters more on a life licence than on any other Maryland line: an appointment is not optional and it is not retroactive by default. Ins. § 10-103(d)(1) says "an insurance producer may not sell, solicit, or negotiate any insurance on behalf of an insurer for which the insurance producer does not have an appointment," and § 10-118(d)(2) bars you from acting until you have received written documentation of it. Life, health and annuity business gets one narrow accommodation the property lines do not - see the application section below.
Life Alone, Life With Health, or the Spanish Paper
Three bookable routes confer the Life line, and all three cost the same $62.
Life Producer, code 2027 (Series 20-27) - the standalone paper. 80 scored items plus 10 unscored, 90 in total, in 1 hr 45 min.
Life and Accident and Health or Sickness Producer - Combo, code 2030 (Series 20-30) - 130 scored plus 10 unscored, 140 in total, in 2 hr 30 min. Note Maryland's official name for the health line: "Accident and Health or Sickness," not "Health" and not "Accident & Health."
Productor de Vida, code 2047 - Maryland publishes Spanish-language versions of every line, codes 2043 to 2053, at the same $62. Most competitor material omits this entirely.
The arithmetic is unusual because Maryland charges a flat $62 per exam rather than pricing by length. The combo is not cheaper than the single paper - it is the same price - so the question is not money but scope. If you will only ever write life and annuities, the 90-item paper is 45 minutes shorter for the same fee. If health cases are in your plan at all, the combo saves you a second $62 later, and possibly a second application fee as well, since Maryland does not publish whether its $54 is per application or per line.
The passing standard is 70%, and in Maryland that is a raw percentage. The Maryland Insurance Exam FAQ states it plainly: "To achieve a passing score on the exam, you must receive a 70% or higher." There is no scaled-score language anywhere in the bulletin, so unlike several Pearson VUE states you can reason about your own performance directly. What Maryland does not publish is which denominator the 70% runs against - 80 scored items or 90 total - so do not build a target around a specific number of misses.
Two documents disagree on how many items do not count. Every per-exam content outline says 10 unscored; the bulletin's Experimental Questions section says 5. The outline totals are internally consistent (80 + 10 = 90), which leans toward 10, but that is an inference and both documents are Prometric's. Either way you cannot identify them, so it changes nothing on the day.
Booking, ID rules and the reschedule window belong to other guides: Prometric surfaces Maryland test centres dynamically at booking rather than printing addresses, which the [Property guide](/insurance/maryland/property-only/licensing-guide) covers; remotely proctored delivery is available in Maryland, walked in the [Health guide](/insurance/maryland/health-only/licensing-guide); the one-ID rule and the 30-minute early arrival are in the [Life & Health guide](/insurance/maryland/life-and-health/licensing-guide); and the 4-day wait before you can retake the same exam is in the [Personal Lines guide](/insurance/maryland/personal-lines/licensing-guide).
Most Tested Topics on the Maryland Life Exam
Maryland's state-specific life items come out of Insurance Article Title 16 and two COMAR chapters, and several of them contradict what a national outline teaches. Before the table, one scope rule that decides items on its own: Ins. § 16-101 excludes reinsurance, group life and group annuities from the entire title. Every provision below is an individual policy rule. A question that puts a group certificate in the fact pattern is usually testing whether you noticed.
| Concept | What Maryland does | Where it's written |
|---|---|---|
| Free look, § 16-105 individual life baseline | 10 days after the policy is delivered, exercised by giving the insurer written notice of cancellation - and the refund is "a pro rata premium for the unexpired term," not a full return of premium. The notice must be attached to or prominently printed on the face of the policy; § 16-105(b)(2) lets the Commissioner accept a notice "not less favorable" instead | Ins. § 16-105(b)(1), (b)(2) |
| Free look, variable life contract | 45 days from execution of the application or 10 days from receipt of the policy, whichever is later - a dual trigger, so work both prongs and take the later date - with "a refund of all premium payments for the policy" | COMAR 31.09.02.04D(1)(a)(v) |
| Suicide clock on a newly issued life policy | 2 years is the permitted exclusion, but it is anti-churning: on a newly issued policy the 2 years is deemed to begin on the date the insurer first issued a life policy to that insured, unless the prior policy ended before the new issue date or more than 12 months after it. Where the new policy adds death benefit, the fresh clock may run as to the excess only | Ins. § 16-215(b)(1)(v), (e) |
| Payout floor on an excluded death | Not a return of premium - the policy must pay at least the reserve, calculated on the Commissioner's reserve valuation method using the mortality table and interest rate the policy specifies for nonforfeiture benefits. Maryland separately forbids excluding death from an act of terrorism the covered person did not commit or participate in | Ins. § 16-215(b)(3), (b)(2) |
| Policy loan interest, policies issued on or after 1 July 1983 | The familiar 6% in § 16-207(c)(1) is expressly "subject to § 16-208" and is effectively the legacy rule. The live ceiling is 8% fixed, or a Moody's-indexed adjustable maximum, redetermined at least every 12 months but not more than once a quarter, which may rise on a 0.5% swing and shall fall on one | Ins. §§ 16-207(c), 16-208(b), (c)(2), (d) |
| Automatic premium loan, individual life | Compulsory. Except for weekly-premium policies, every policy subject to § 16-207 shall provide for an automatic premium loan, subject to an election by the party entitled to elect. Most states leave APL optional | Ins. § 16-207(g) |
| Misstatement of age and the void window | Ordinarily the benefit is "the amount or benefit that the premium would have purchased had the correct age been stated." But where the application or policy limits insurable age and the correct age falls outside it, the insurer may void during the insured's lifetime and not later than 3 years after issuance, and not more than 30 days after the correct age is established | Ins. § 16-205(a), (b)(1), (b)(3) |
| Grace period, individual life policy | 30 days, or at the insurer's option one month of not less than 30 days, or 4 weeks for industrial life with premiums payable more often than monthly. The policy continues in full force during grace, and a premium due or overdue may be deducted from the proceeds on a claim arising in it | Ins. § 16-202(a)(2), (b), (c) |
| Incontestability, individual life policy | 2 years after the date of issue, in force during the insured's lifetime, nonpayment always excepted - and § 16-203(c) narrows it: the clause "precludes only a contest of the validity of the policy" and does not preclude defences based on provisions that exclude or restrict coverage | Ins. § 16-203(a), (c) |
| Reinstatement window, lapsed life policy | 3 years after the due date of the first premium in default - 2 years for industrial life - on written application, evidence of insurability satisfactory to the insurer, and arrears plus indebtedness at a rate not exceeding 6% per year compounded annually. Barred if surrendered for cash value, if the cash value is exhausted by indebtedness, or if paid-up term insurance has expired | Ins. § 16-210(a), (b) |
| Scope of Title 16, group life | § 16-101 excludes reinsurance, group life and group annuities from the whole title, so none of the provisions above reaches a group certificate. § 16-105 has its own extra carve-out for a policy funding a qualified plan under IRC §§ 401/403/404/501 where participation is a condition of employment - all three elements must be present | Ins. §§ 16-101, 16-105(a) |
| Viatical settlement, the viator's rescission window | At least 15 calendar days after the viator receives the settlement proceeds - Maryland regulates viatical and life settlements rather than leaving them to contract | Ins. Sec. 8-610; Ins. Title 8, Subtitle 6 |
| Nonforfeiture options, individual life policy | The three required options are cash surrender value, reduced paid-up insurance and extended term insurance | Ins. Secs. 16-303, 16-306 (Standard Nonforfeiture Law) |
| Dividend crediting, participating life policy | Participating ordinary life must credit dividends beginning not later than the end of the third policy year; participating industrial life, the fifth. An ordinary policy must designate a default option effective within 30 days unless the recipient asks otherwise | Ins. Sec. 16-206(a)(1)(ii), (a)(2)(ii), (b)(3) |
Four of these decide more points than the rest, and all four are places where Maryland's answer is not the national one.
The first is the free look, because Maryland has three of them and they refund differently. A national outline teaches "free look equals return of premium." In Maryland that is true of the replacement rule (unconditional full refund, 30 days) and of the variable-life rule (all premium payments, 45-or-10-whichever-is-later), and false of the general statutory rule, which gives only a pro rata premium for the unexpired term across 10 days from delivery. The statutory baseline is the stingiest of the three. Notice also what triggers it: § 16-105(b)(1) runs from delivery, not from the application or the issue date, and it is exercised by written notice of cancellation rather than by handing the policy back. The [Life & Health guide](/insurance/maryland/life-and-health/licensing-guide) works the replacement family in depth; what you need on the Life paper is the contrast between the three refund measures.
The second is the suicide clock, which Maryland re-anchors. Everywhere else the two years runs from the policy in front of you. Under § 16-215(e) it is deemed to begin on the date on which the insurer first issued a life insurance policy to the insured - a rule aimed squarely at an insurer restarting the clock by rewriting its own business, which is why the exception turns on whether the prior policy terminated more than 12 months after the new issue date. Pair it with § 16-215(b)(3): when an exclusion does apply, the insurer still owes the reserve, not the premiums. An item that offers "two years from this policy's issue date" and "return of premium" is offering two wrong answers in one line.
The third is policy loan interest, and it is a date trap rather than a number trap. Quote 6% and you are quoting § 16-207(c)(1), which says of itself that it is "subject to § 16-208." For every policy issued on or after 1 July 1983 the operative ceiling is § 16-208(b): 8% fixed, or an adjustable maximum tied to Moody's corporate bond yield average - monthly average corporates. The asymmetry in § 16-208(d) is worth memorising because it is the fair-dealing half of the rule - the rate may be raised when the calculation would raise it by at least 0.5%, but it shall be reduced when the calculation would lower it by at least 0.5%. Watch out for the other 6% figures in Title 16, which are unrelated: § 16-210(a) reinstatement interest, § 16-402(c) annuity grace interest, § 16-407(a) annuity reinstatement.
The fourth is the automatic premium loan, which most candidates have learned as a policy option. In Maryland § 16-207(g) makes the provision compulsory in every policy subject to that section except weekly-premium policies; what remains optional is the policyholder's election to switch it on. And one more that quietly costs points: misstatement of age in Maryland has two limbs, not one. The familiar adjust-the-benefit rule at § 16-205(a) is the default, but where the policy caps insurable age and the true age falls outside that cap the insurer gets a void option - available only during the insured's lifetime, only within 3 years of issuance, and only within 30 days after the correct age is established. Miss any of those three and the void option is gone and the benefit is adjusted instead.
Applying for Your Maryland License, Step by Step
Maryland is an exam-first state, and the portal enforces it. This is the single most useful operational fact on the page, because in several states you may file and test in either order. Here you may not.
The bulletin says it at p.11: "Once you have passed your license exam (if an exam is required), you must submit your license application along with any other required documents and your fee." NIPR says the same thing from the machine's side: "NIPR verifies exams prior to allowing submission of an application." The portal does not warn you and then let you through - it blocks the submission. If you try to file before your Life Producer result has posted, you do not get a pending application; you get nothing.
Step 1 - Pass the Life Producer exam (code 2027). You get your result on screen at the end of the session and a score report by email; results are also available at scorereports.prometric.com. Then wait for the result to reach the licensing system. The MIA's own figure for how long exam results take to process is 2 to 3 business days. That is the window in which a NIPR submission will bounce.
Step 2 - File the application at nipr.com. NIPR is the electronic route for a Maryland producer application. Sircon is not - in Maryland, Sircon is the continuing-education transcript and course-lookup system only, and sending a licence application there is a wasted afternoon. The form is the NAIC Uniform Application for Individual Insurance Producer License; its background questions are the whole of Maryland's character review (see Step 4).
The paper alternative still exists, and unlike in many states it is not vestigial - one reciprocity path actually requires it. The address is Maryland Insurance Administration, ATTN: Producer Licensing Unit, 200 St. Paul Place, Suite 2700, Baltimore, Maryland 21202. Keep it: a producer relocating into Maryland within 90 days of a home-state cancellation must file on paper only, and filing that application online defeats the exam waiver. The [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/maryland/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide) walks that trap in full.
Step 3 - Pay $54. The initial producer application fee is $54, and it is the same $54 for a resident or a non-resident, an individual or a business entity. Two honest caveats. First, no Maryland source states whether the $54 is charged per application or per line of authority. The fee schedule carries a single "Producer" row with no per-line multiplier, which is why $54 is the figure everyone quotes, but that is an inference from the table's structure rather than a published rule - so if you are adding Life alongside another line, budget for the possibility of a second $54. Second, the $54 is not the renewal figure: renewal is $69, which is the same $54 plus a $15 fraud prevention fee.
Step 4 - Answer the background questions, and if any answer is yes, build the packet. Maryland does not run a separate background process; it runs the Uniform Application's disclosure questions, and the bulletin's only sentence on the subject is the instruction: "If you answer 'Yes' to a background question on the application, submit your written statement accompanied by corresponding court documents." Both halves are required. A written statement without the court documents is an incomplete filing, and the documents without your own account of what happened leave the reviewer to draw their own conclusion. Assemble the disposition paperwork before you start the application rather than mid-form.
It is worth knowing at this point what you will owe after licensure on the same subject, because Maryland's clocks are not the national ones. Criminal prosecution is reportable within 30 days of your initial appearance before a court (§ 10-126(g)(3)) - not from charge, not from conviction - with the charging document and any court order attached, and misdemeanour violations of the Maryland Vehicle Law or another state's vehicle law are exempt (§ 10-126(g)(2)). Adverse administrative action in another jurisdiction is reportable within 30 days of final disposition (§ 10-126(f)(1)). A national course that teaches "30 days from conviction" is wrong for Maryland on both clocks.
Step 5 - There is no fingerprint step, and here is the evidence rather than the assertion. Maryland publishes no fingerprint or criminal-background appointment for a resident producer licence. Six primary sources were read for one: the 12-page Prometric bulletin, whose only background text is the sentence quoted in Step 4; the MIA Producer FAQ; the MIA Producer Initial and Renewal Licenses page; the MIA fee schedule, which itemises every producer licence fee and carries no fingerprint line; NIPR's Maryland resident individual page; and NAIC's Maryland paper-licensing page. None imposes one and none says one is not required, so treat this as "not published" rather than as an affirmative exemption. One thing not to confuse it with: Maryland does fingerprint mortgage loan originators through the Department of Labor at dllr.state.md.us. That is a different regulator and reaches Insurance Producer-MLOs only.
Step 6 - Get appointed before you write anything. The licence lets you be appointed; the appointment lets you sell. § 10-103(d)(1) bars selling, soliciting or negotiating on behalf of an insurer that has not appointed you, and § 10-118(d)(2) bars you from acting until you have received written documentation of the appointment - the insurer has 30 days from appointing you to enter it in its register. Life, health and annuity business gets one narrow accommodation the property lines do not: under § 10-118(d)(3) an insurer may initially accept an application from an unappointed producer if, within 30 days, it either rejects the application under § 27-501 or appoints and registers the producer. Do not read that as permission to write business unappointed - it is the insurer's safe harbour, not yours.
Step 7 - Adding a line later. There is no re-application from scratch: pass the appropriate exam and allow the same 2 to 3 business days for the result to process. Adding Accident and Health or Sickness to a Life licence means sitting exam code 2024, again at $62.
What Maryland does not publish, and what you should therefore not assume. No source states a deadline between passing the exam and filing the application, and the bulletin was checked twice for one. The Prometric bulletin states no attempt cap either - only the 4-day wait before retaking the same exam. On score validity the bulletin is silent, but the MIA is not: its Producer-Initial-Renewal-Licenses.pdf says "The examination results are valid for 6 months" and that a candidate who does not apply inside that window loses them. Treat 6 months as the outside figure, while noting that the same document is stale in other respects - it still names PSI as the exam vendor and 20 hours of repealed pre-licensing. The honest response is the same either way: apply promptly after you pass rather than relying on a window that Maryland has never printed.
Once licensed, keep the file current. A change of legal name, trade name, e-mail address or address must be filed within 30 days, and failing to do so is itself a violation under § 10-126(a)(1) (§ 10-117(b)). Individual licences then run two years and expire on the last day of your birth month (§ 10-115(d)); the renewal mechanics, the 90-day early window and the late tiers are in the [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/maryland/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide).
What It Costs
Two payments and two payees. Maryland's flat $62 per exam does not vary by paper length, so the 90-item Life Producer exam costs exactly what the 140-item combined exam costs, and the $54 application fee is the same for residents and non-residents.
The one line in this table that is an inference rather than a quotation is fingerprinting. Maryland publishes no fingerprint step for a resident producer licence and the MIA fee schedule carries no fingerprint line, which is why $0 appears here - but no Maryland source affirmatively states that fingerprints are not required, so read it as "nothing published to pay" rather than as an exemption you can cite.
Eligibility Requirements
Be at least 18 (Ins. § 10-104), pass the Life Producer exam, file the Uniform Application and pay the $54 fee. No sponsoring insurer is required to sit the exam, and since October 1, 2024 there is no coursework prerequisite and no minimum-experience prerequisite - MIA Bulletin 24-19 repealed both. The MIA now tells candidates in terms that they "may find their own insurance exam preparation courses or they may order their own study materials."
A designation does not buy you anything on this licence. Maryland's historic designation list - CLU, ChFC, CFP, FLMI, LUTCF, RHU, CEBS, HIA and the property-side designations - exempted holders from pre-licensing coursework only, and it said so: holders were "exempt from the pre-licensing requirements, but still must successfully pass the Maryland exam for the line(s) requested." That list never waived an exam, and the requirement it exempted from no longer exists. The current bulletin has no exemptions section at all. The waivers that are genuinely live - the 90-day relocation waiver, and the lines Maryland licenses with no exam at all - are worked through in the [Life & Health guide](/insurance/maryland/life-and-health/licensing-guide).
Military and veteran candidates: the bulletin's first page states that "Veterans who sit for certain Maryland insurance examinations can be reimbursed up to $2,000 for each exam under the GI Bill," and that dependents of disabled veterans may also qualify. That reaches the $62 exam fee rather than the $54 licence fee. ADA accommodations require 30 days' advance notice and carry no additional charge.
If you already hold a life licence in another state and are moving to Maryland, do not start here. Ins. § 10-119(h)(1)-(2) and § 10-119(b)(2)(ii) can take the exam out of the sequence entirely where the application arrives within 90 days of the previous home-state cancellation - and one of the two routes must be filed on paper. See the [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/maryland/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide) before you touch NIPR.
Keeping the License
Important CE details: 24 hours every two years including 3 hours of ethics, on a cycle keyed to your birth month. Carry-over hours are not allowed, and a course may not be duplicated within the same renewal period nor within 6 months of the previous completion. The MIA heads its product block "Additional requirements for Producers who also sell:", so these gates follow the product rather than the licence. A life producer who sells long-term care owes 2 hours in a course designated Long Term Care as part of the L/H hours, and a one-time 4-credit Annuity Suitability course under COMAR 31.09.12.08 before recommending or selling an annuity (1 credit if you were trained under the prior model). MIA Bulletin 22-11 is explicit that the annuity training is a sales prerequisite rather than a CE requirement, though a dually approved course can produce both. The statutory completion deadline is 15 days before expiration under Ins. section 10-116(a)(2); the MIA separately recommends finishing 30 days out to allow processing time, and providers have up to 10 days to report a completion. Transcripts and the approved-course lookup run through Sircon.
24 hours every two years, 3 of them ethics, on a cycle keyed to your birth month - individual licences expire on the last day of the month in which you were born (Ins. § 10-115(d)), and expiration also terminates your appointments (§ 10-115(a)(2)).
The deadline is 15 days, and the recommendation is 30. Both numbers are real and they answer different questions. Ins. § 10-116(a)(2) is the law: "An insurance producer shall complete the continuing education required under paragraph (1) of this subsection not later than 15 days before the expiration date of the insurance producer's license." The MIA's own Producer Continuing Education Credit Requirements index instructs, without hedging: "Complete CEs 30 days before the license expiration date." 15 days is the testable statutory answer; 30 days is the practical one, and the reason for the gap is that providers have up to 10 days to report a completion.
Two rules bite harder here than in most states. Maryland does not allow carryover - "Carry over hours are not allowed" - so a 30-hour year buys you nothing toward the next cycle. And duplicate courses are not allowed within the same renewal period nor within 6 months, which rules out re-taking a convenient course to top up.
Two product gates can attach to a Life licence - and they follow what you sell, not the licence itself. The MIA heads the block "Additional requirements for Producers who also sell:". The first is Long Term Care - 2 hours in a course designated Long Term Care, as part of your L/H hours, so it consumes 2 of the 24 rather than adding to them. The second is annuity training, and it is not really CE at all: COMAR 31.09.12.08 requires a 4-credit annuity course (1 credit if you were trained under the prior model) completed before engaging in the recommendation or sale of annuities, one time only. MIA Bulletin 22-11 is blunt about the classification - "The annuity training is not a CE requirement. This is training required prior to selling an annuity product" - even though the MIA's own CE credit table lists annuity among its rows. The reconciliation is that a dually approved course can satisfy the sales prerequisite and also yield CE hours. There is also an LTC Partnership gate of an 8-hour initial course or a 4-hour refresher every two years; whether those hours count toward the 24 is not stated in the MIA's table the way the other rows are, so do not plan on it.
Transcripts and course lookup run through Sircon, while Prometric is the MIA's continuing-education vendor - which is why Maryland producers meet Prometric twice, once at the exam and once for CE. A narrow exception exists for Funeral Director licensees limited to Life: 16 hours, being 13 L/H plus 3 ethics.
Renewal itself is $69 - the $54 renewal fee plus a $15 fraud prevention fee - and Maryland licences are not perpetual. The early window, the one-year late-renewal path with its $100 fee, and what happens when a licence has been expired more than a year are covered in the [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/maryland/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide).
Quick Reference
Official Links
Don't study generic. Study Maryland.
You've got the roadmap. Now get the Maryland-specific Life question bank, mock exams, and video course built by instructors with 20+ years teaching this material.