The Minnesota Accident/Health Producer License
Your regulator is the Minnesota Department of Commerce. Minnesota has no Department of Insurance - insurance sits inside Commerce alongside banking, securities and energy, and the Commissioner of Commerce is appointed by the Governor with the advice and consent of the Senate rather than elected. Getting the name right matters more here than it sounds, because every portal, form and fee page you will use is branded Commerce.
The line has three official names and that is worth one honest sentence. Commerce writes it "Accident/Health" on its resident-producer page. PSI prints "Accident & Health Producer" on the exam and in its fee table. And Minn. Stat. 60K.365 speaks of a producer licensed for "accident and health or sickness" insurance. No single canonical short form is published, so do not be thrown when a course, a statute and a booking screen disagree about what to call the thing you are buying.
The path is four steps and Minnesota enforces their order. Twenty hours of Commerce-approved pre-licensing education for this line (Minn. Stat. 60K.36, subd. 4). Pass the Accident & Health Producer exam - 75 scored items, 2 hours, $45. Get fingerprinted. Apply and pay $50 for the line plus the $10 technology surcharge, through Sircon or NIPR.
The sequencing penalty is real and it is unusually harsh. Commerce states it flatly: "If you take the examination before you have successfully completed all applicable prelicense education requirements, you will forfeit your examination fees, your results will not count - even if you pass." Passing is not a defence. Finish the coursework first, and bring the paper certificate.
Fingerprints are required of every producer applicant - the bulletin says "ALL applicants for Producer and Adjuster licenses must provide a set of fingerprints" - at $63.75 taken electronically by PSI at a test centre after you pass, or $32.00 by check to Commerce with a manually taken card. That step interacts with remote testing in a way nobody publishes, which is why it appears in this guide's remote-proctoring walkthrough rather than only in the fingerprinting guide.
Sircon is the Commerce Department's named front door for applications, renewals, provider lookup and CE transcripts; NIPR also accepts applications. Once licensed, your licence expires on the last day of your birth month on a term set to run at least 12 and no more than 24 months (Minn. Stat. 60K.55, subd. 2). If a study guide tells you Minnesota renews on October 31 by even or odd birth year, close it - that fixed date survives in the statute only as a legacy clause for licences issued before August 1, 2010, and the birth-year parity mechanism is not in the statute at all.
One product gate rides on this licence specifically. Long-term care training under Minn. Stat. 60K.365 attaches to a producer licensed for accident and health or sickness insurance or life insurance: 8 hours initially and 4 hours every 24 months. Annuities do not ride here - they ride on the Life line, and the [Life guide](/insurance/minnesota/life-only/licensing-guide) carries them.
What this guide deliberately does not tell you. Minnesota's chapter 62A mandated-benefit catalogue, its pre-existing condition rules, the terms of the group-to-individual conversion statute, and the former-spouse continuation cap in 62A.21, subd. 2a were not verified in this build. Those are real exam territory and their absence here is not evidence that Minnesota is silent on them - read them in the statute rather than from a national list, because a national list is exactly where wrong Minnesota answers come from.
The rest of the licensing machinery lives in the other Minnesota guides, one owner each: the [Life guide](/insurance/minnesota/life-only/licensing-guide) walks the Sircon and NIPR application, the [Property guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-only/licensing-guide) prints the nine Minnesota test centres and their street addresses, the [Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/casualty-only/licensing-guide) walks fingerprinting end to end, the [Personal Lines guide](/insurance/minnesota/personal-lines/licensing-guide) covers results and retakes, the [Life & Health guide](/insurance/minnesota/life-and-health/licensing-guide) owns exam day and pre-licensing, and the [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide) owns reciprocity and renewal.
The Accident & Health Paper, and the Combined Alternative
Minnesota prints a genuine standalone paper for this line, so you are not pushed into the combined exam to sell health. Both routes cost $45.
Accident & Health Producer - 75 scored items in 2 hours. The content outline breaks it as "(50 scored plus 5 pretest questions)" for product knowledge, terms and concepts, and "State Laws, Rules, and Regulations (25 scored questions plus 5 pretest questions)". So 85 questions are administered and 10 of them do not count.
Life, Accident & Health Producer - the combined paper, 130 scored items in 3 hours, built as 50 Life plus 50 A&H plus 30 Minnesota, with 15 pretest on top for 145 administered. It confers both lines.
The arithmetic is unusual, because Minnesota charges a flat $45 regardless of paper length. The combined exam is not more expensive than the single one. What the combined route does cost you is elsewhere: pre-licensing is 20 hours per line of authority, so two lines means two courses, and the licence fee is $50 per line. If health is genuinely all you will write, the standalone paper is an hour shorter and one course cheaper. If life or annuity work is in your plan at all, sitting the combined paper once beats sitting a second exam later.
Minnesota assigns no series or code numbers to its exams. They are identified by name only in both the fee table and the time table. If a prep site quotes you a code for a Minnesota insurance exam, it invented it or imported it from another state.
The Minnesota block is 25 of your 75 scored items, and it has a fixed shape across every line: a 20-item core headed "Minnesota Laws, Rules, and Regulations Common to Life, Health, Property, and Casualty Insurance", plus a 5-item tail specific to accident and health. That ratio is worth internalising before you plan study time. Five items decide the health-specific state content; twenty decide the shared regulatory content that the [Life & Health guide](/insurance/minnesota/life-and-health/licensing-guide) and the [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide) also live in. On the combined paper the Minnesota block grows to 30 and carries two 5-item tails instead of one.
70% to pass, and in Minnesota that is a raw percentage. The bulletin's score-reporting section says "You will need 70% correct to pass the exam." The words scaled and raw do not appear anywhere in its eleven pages, and neither does the standard scaled-score disclaimer about the score being neither the number nor the percentage of questions answered correctly. Minnesota's own Personal Lines outline independently prints a column headed "Minimum Passing Score - 70%". So you can reason about your own performance directly, which you cannot do in several Pearson VUE states.
Two PSI documents disagree about how many questions do not count, and both can be right. The bulletin describes "a small number (5 to 15) of 'experimental' questions" that are not scored but do count against your time. The Accident & Health outline specifies exactly 5 pretest per section, which is 10 on this paper. Ten sits inside the five-to-fifteen envelope, so the outline is the per-exam specification and the bulletin is the range. Either way you cannot identify them, and either way they eat clock: budget 2 hours for 85 questions, not for 75.
Retakes. You cannot rebook the same day - PSI is explicit that "It is not possible to make a new examination appointment on the same day you have taken an examination." In practice the wait is a day or two, and the bulletin gives the worked example: a candidate who tests unsuccessfully on a Wednesday can call Thursday and retest as soon as Friday, subject to space. No attempt cap is stated anywhere in the bulletin - which is not the same thing as a published guarantee of unlimited attempts, so do not repeat that claim as if Minnesota made it. A retake is a fresh $45. The [Personal Lines guide](/insurance/minnesota/personal-lines/licensing-guide) works results and retake strategy in depth.
Booking is where this guide's own module starts. Minnesota's vendor offers both delivery formats and asks you to choose one at the moment you schedule. That choice changes your ID rules, your break rights, your desk and, as it turns out, your fingerprint appointment. The walkthrough is below.
Most Tested Topics on the Minnesota Health Exam
Twenty-five of your scored items are Minnesota law, and the health-specific ones cluster hard in three places: the group continuation right in chapter 62A, the prompt-pay rule in chapter 62Q, and the external-review machinery next door to it. Learn those three sections properly and you have covered most of what a national course will get wrong for you.
| Concept | What Minnesota does | Where it's written |
|---|---|---|
| Continuation, group health, employer-size floor | There is no floor. Minnesota's state continuation right applies to group coverage regardless of employer size, so it reaches the small groups federal COBRA never touches. Federal COBRA switches on at 20 or more employees; Minnesota's own right does not wait for that number and does not stop above it | Minn. Stat. 62A.17; federal COBRA for the 20-employee contrast |
| Continuation term and premium ceiling, group health | Up to 18 months, at a premium of up to 102% of the group cost. Longer runs exist for certain events under the federal COBRA rules, but 18 months and 102% are the Minnesota numbers to carry into the exam | Minn. Stat. 62A.17, subd. 2 |
| Continuation election clock, group health | 60 days to elect, and the 60 days runs from the LATER of the termination or the employee's receipt of the employer's notice - a later-of trigger, not a date-of-termination trigger. The employer's own duty is to give that notice within 14 days | Minn. Stat. 62A.17, subd. 5 |
| Whose right the continuation is, group health | It is an employee entitlement, not an employer duty to make an offer. The employer's obligation in the statute is the 14-day notice; the right to continue belongs to the employee and is exercised by the employee. A fact pattern in which an employer simply never offers continuation does not extinguish the entitlement | Minn. Stat. 62A.17 |
| Clean-claim payment deadline, health plan company | 30 CALENDAR days after receipt of a clean claim - and Minnesota applies the same 30 days to paper and electronic claims, so there is no faster electronic tier to memorize. No portfolio-percentage threshold appears anywhere in the section: every clean claim runs its own clock rather than being measured against a "95 percent of claims" style standard | Minn. Stat. 62Q.75, subd. 2 |
| Interest on a late clean health claim | 1.5% per month - 18% a year - on a clean claim not paid inside the 30 days, paid at least quarterly. Do not cross-wire it with the auto side: overdue no-fault benefits bear 15% simple interest under a different chapter | Minn. Stat. 62Q.75, subd. 2; contrast 65B.54, subd. 2 |
| External review, the enrollee's filing window | Six months for the ENROLLEE to request external review. Months, not days, and it is the enrollee's clock - nothing in this row belongs to the insurer | Minn. Stat. 62Q.73 |
| External review, the information-submission clock | Ten BUSINESS days for the HEALTH PLAN COMPANY AND THE ENROLLEE to submit information to the external review entity. Business days here, sitting one row away from bare days and hours, and the actor is both sides at once | Minn. Stat. 62Q.73 |
| External review, the standard decision and who is bound | 45 bare days for the EXTERNAL REVIEW ENTITY to decide - and the decision binds the health plan company. The enrollee is not bound, and the plan may take it to court only on an arbitrary and capricious theory. This is the asymmetry the item usually turns on | Minn. Stat. 62Q.73, subd. 8 |
| External review, the expedited track | 72 hours for the expedited decision, with 48 hours to give written confirmation of it. Two different hour counts inside one track | Minn. Stat. 62Q.73 |
| Ten-day cancellation right, individual sickness policy, and its two carve-outs | The right to cancel by returning the policy and giving written notice before midnight of the tenth day following the date of purchase covers an individual sickness policy, a nonprofit health service plan contract and an HMO subscriber contract - but it expressly excludes Medicare-related coverage and long-term care insurance. "Date of purchase" means the date the purchaser receives the policy, and mailed notice is effective on being postmarked, properly addressed and postage prepaid. The right may not be waived or surrendered | Minn. Stat. 72A.51, subds. 1-4; carve-outs defined at 62A.3099, subd. 17 and 62S.01, subd. 18 |
| Long-term care producer training gate, A&H line | Riding on this line: 8 hours initial training and 4 hours every 24 months ongoing, required of a producer licensed for accident and health or sickness insurance or life insurance. The courses may be approved as continuing education under 60K.56, so they can consume part of the 24 rather than sitting on top. And the regulator does not police it - the insurer must obtain verification before it lets you sell its long-term care products | Minn. Stat. 60K.365; 60K.56 |
| Health claims inside the general claims statute | Minnesota's unfair-claims section routes accident-and-health policies out to the prompt-pay rule: for those policies the insurer must comply with all of the requirements of section 62Q.75, and for accepted health claims it must notify the insured or claimant no less than semiannually of the disposition of claims | Minn. Stat. 72A.201, subd. 4(3) |
| MCHA's current statutory job | The Minnesota Comprehensive Health Association is live as an entity, and its current statutory work is administering the Minnesota Premium Security Plan reinsurance program. Answer the narrow question the statute answers and stop there | Minn. Stat. 62E.23, subd. 1 |
| Minnesota's exchange and public programs | A state-based exchange - MNsure - not the federal HealthCare.gov. Medicaid is Medical Assistance, administered by the Department of Human Services, expanded to 138% FPL (early opt-in March 1, 2011; full ACA expansion January 1, 2014). MinnesotaCare is a separate Basic Health Program above Medicaid levels, and CHIP runs as a Medicaid-expansion CHIP funding Medical Assistance for children | Minn. Stat. ch. 62V; ch. 256B; ch. 256L |
Three of these decide more points than the rest, and each is a place where the national answer is not the Minnesota answer.
The first is continuation, and the trap is the number 20. A national course teaches COBRA, COBRA switches on at 20 or more employees, and candidates import that floor into the state answer. Minnesota's right under 62A.17 has no employer-size floor at all - it reaches a three-person shop and a three-thousand-person employer alike, which is exactly why it matters: it fills the small-group gap COBRA leaves. Two more things about it get answered wrong on the same item. It is an employee entitlement, not an employer duty to make an offer, so the employer failing to offer it does not destroy it; the employer's discrete obligation is the 14-day notice. And the 60-day election period runs from the later of the termination or the employee's receipt of that notice, so a fact pattern that gives you a termination date, a notice date and asks when the election period closes is testing the later-of trigger, not your arithmetic. Round it out with 18 months and 102% and you have the whole section.
The second is 62Q.75, and it is a two-part trap. Part one is the unit: 30 CALENDAR days, with no separate electronic tier - a good many states run a shorter clock for electronic claims than for paper, and Minnesota does not, so an item that offers you one deadline for electronic and a longer one for paper is offering a plausible-looking answer out of somebody else's statute. Part two is the interest, 1.5% per month paid at least quarterly, and the reason to nail it down is that Minnesota runs a second, louder claims-interest rule on the auto side at 15% simple for overdue no-fault benefits. Different rate, different chapter, different product, and they are extremely easy to cross-wire under time pressure. Note too that the section carries no portfolio-percentage threshold - Minnesota's surviving portfolio test lives in the unfair-methods section of chapter 72A, not here, so a health claim is judged one claim at a time rather than against a percentage of the insurer's book.
The third is 62Q.73, which is worth teaching slowly because the section manages to use four different units of time and change the responsible actor between them. Six months for the enrollee to file. Ten business days for the health plan company and the enrollee to get information to the external review entity. Forty-five bare days for the external review entity to issue a standard decision. Seventy-two hours on the expedited track, with 48 hours for written confirmation. Any study table that heads that column "insurer" is wrong on every row - the insurer is one of two joint actors on exactly one of the four clocks and is the actor on none of the others. Then finish with the part candidates skip: the decision binds the health plan company but not the enrollee, and the plan's only route past it is a court challenge on the grounds that the decision was arbitrary and capricious or involved an abuse of discretion - two grounds, not one. That asymmetry, not the day count, is usually what the item is really asking.
Two smaller ones worth banking. The ten-day cancellation right is where health quietly diverges from life. Minnesota's cancellation right sits in chapter 72A rather than in the health chapters, it runs ten days from the date you receive the policy rather than from issue or application, and it expressly excludes Medicare-related coverage and long-term care insurance. Those two exclusions are the item. Sell a Medicare supplement or an LTC policy and you are outside this section entirely - LTC is governed by chapter 62S instead. And MCHA: the honest answer is narrow. The Minnesota Comprehensive Health Association is live as an entity and its current statutory job is administering the Minnesota Premium Security Plan reinsurance program. Do not answer that it sunset, and do not answer that it still writes high-risk coverage.
Testing From Home: Minnesota's Remote Proctored Option, Step by Step
Minnesota's vendor offers remote delivery and asks you to commit to it at booking. The wording on the screen is the wording to look for: "Select your test format: (Test Center) or (Remote Proctored)." Both routes deliver the same Accident & Health Producer paper - 75 scored items, 85 administered, two hours - and both cost the same $45. Everything around the exam changes.
Step 1 - Book the format, not just the date. Schedule at test-takers.psiexams.com/mnins or by phone on (866) 395-1006, and create the account using your name exactly as it appears on the ID you intend to show. A mismatch between the registration name and the ID is a check-in failure, and on a remote session there is no counter staff to reason with. The cancellation rule is the same on both routes: you keep your fee only if the notice reaches PSI 2 days before the scheduled date.
Step 2 - Run the compatibility check before the day, not on it. PSI requires a check covering Audio/Video Check, Webcam Check and System Check, and passing it is a precondition of launching. Run it on the exact machine, in the exact room, on the exact connection you will use, because all three are what it is testing. A work laptop is the classic failure: managed devices block the software the proctor needs, and you find out at your booked time rather than the week before.
Step 3 - Launch inside the 15-minute window, not the 30-minute one. PSI's remote-proctor instructions carry two numbers and they conflict. One says "You will be able to LAUNCH your test within 30 minutes of your booked test time." Three sentences earlier the same section says "By not starting your test within 15 minutes after your booked time, you forfeit your test fee or test eligibility." Work to the 15 minutes, because that is the figure with the penalty attached to it, and log in early rather than testing which sentence a proctor applies. It is a different kind of deadline from the test-centre rule it replaces - a centre asks you to arrive 15 minutes early and forfeits your fee if you are late - but the consequence is the same shape, and the practical risk is worse remotely because nothing about sitting at your own desk feels like being late. Log in early and wait.
Step 4 - Bring one ID, and read the list carefully, because one entry on it means something different when you go remote. Minnesota requires one form of identification, and it must contain your signature, contain your photo, and be valid and unexpired. The published list is seven items:
1. State issued driver's license
2. State issued identification card
3. US Government Issued Passport
4. US Government Issued Military Identification Card - "not allowed for remote testing"
5. US Government Issued Alien Registration Card
6. Canadian Government Issued ID
7. An expired clipped driver's license together with the DMV renewal receipt, if you are in the process of renewing
The asymmetry in item 4 is the single most testable thing on this page. A US Government Issued Military Identification Card is accepted at a Minnesota test centre and is expressly not allowed for remote testing. The list says so in the entry itself. A service member or a military dependent who books remote proctoring on the strength of "my ID is on the accepted list" has read the list correctly and reached the wrong conclusion. If a military ID is your only ID, book a test centre.
Note also what the list does not do: it does not omit the driver's licence. A state issued driver's license is item one. Some prep material warns candidates that a driver's licence might be rejected in some states; that warning does not apply in Minnesota, and item 7 goes further by accepting an expired clipped licence together with the DMV renewal receipt if you are mid-renewal.
Step 5 - Set the room up to the rules, because you cannot fix it once you start. PSI imposes adequate lighting requirements, and hand and eye positioning rules - your hands and your gaze stay where the camera can see them, which rules out reading from a second monitor, glancing off-screen to think, or resting your hands out of frame. You cannot change spaces mid-exam: the room you launch in is the room you finish in, so a housemate walking through is a problem you solve beforehand rather than by relocating. And there is no scratch paper - none, not a whiteboard, not a single sheet. Any arithmetic on a continuation premium or an elimination-period question is done in your head or on the screen.
Step 6 - Plan for two straight hours. "Breaks are NOT allowed during remote online proctored examinations." That is the flat rule, and it is the biggest practical difference between the two formats. Two hours, 85 questions, no standing up. Hydrate before, not during, and do a full-length timed practice sitting in one block before you book, because discovering your concentration curve at minute 80 of the real thing is an expensive way to learn it.
Step 7 - Do not photograph anything, including your pass. PSI's wording admits no exceptions: "under no circumstances are you allowed to take a screenshot or photo of the exam or the exam results." People break this rule at the end, not the beginning - the score appears on screen, the relief hits, and the phone comes out. Do not. You do not need to capture it: your score is displayed on screen at the end and a score report is emailed to you, and if you fail, that emailed report carries a diagnostic breakdown of your strengths and weaknesses by examination type. Duplicate reports come from scorereport@psionline.com.
Step 8 - Now solve the fingerprint problem that testing remotely creates. This is the operational consequence nobody spells out, and it is the reason to think twice before choosing remote delivery in Minnesota. Fingerprints are required of all producer applicants, and Commerce describes the smooth path in a conditional sentence: "If you take your license examination at a PSI test center in Minnesota, your fingerprints will be taken electronically at the test center after you sit for and pass the exam and sign a background check consent form." Test at a centre and the $63.75 capture happens in the same trip, minutes after you pass. Test remotely and that sentence does not describe you. No source states what a remote candidate does instead, so plan on one of the two other published routes: PSI's walk-in fingerprinting hours at a Minnesota test centre, or a manually taken card from a local police station mailed with the consent form and a $32.00 check payable to "Minnesota Department of Commerce" at 85 7th Place East, Suite 280, St. Paul, MN 55101. Either way you cannot file the application until the prints are in - Commerce is explicit that you may submit "as soon as you have passed the examination and submitted your fingerprints." The [Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/casualty-only/licensing-guide) walks the whole fingerprint process; what belongs here is the choice that creates the problem.
One more thing the remote route does not publish, and you should raise before you book. The bulletin requires first-time producer applicants to present a valid paper course-completion certificate matching the photo ID and the registration name - paper, matching, presented. It does not say how that is presented on a webcam session, or whether the provider's electronic certification to Commerce substitutes. Given the sequencing penalty behind it - sit before you finish the coursework and you forfeit the fee and the result does not count even if you pass - this is worth a call to (866) 395-1006 before you commit to remote delivery rather than a discovery at launch.
What is the same on both routes. The $45 fee and its non-refundable, non-transferable status. The 2-day cancellation window. The same-day retake bar, and the roughly one-to-two-day practical wait. The 70% standard. The three-year validity of a passing score. And the review policy: you may enter comments on individual items through the in-exam Comments link, and PSI states that "This is the only review of examination materials available to candidates" - there is no hand-score, no formal appeal, and no second look at the questions after the fact. A comment is a note to the item writers, not a challenge to your result.
So which should you pick? Choose the test centre if a military ID is your only ID, if you want the fingerprints done in the same trip, if you would rather have a proctor you can raise a hand to, or if you want the option of a break existing even if you do not use it. Choose remote if the nearest of Minnesota's nine centres is a long drive, if your home setup is genuinely controlled for two uninterrupted hours, and if you have already passed the compatibility check on the real machine. What should not decide it is money - the fee is identical - or convenience alone, because the fingerprint step quietly puts most remote candidates in a test centre anyway.
What It Costs
Three payees and, on the smooth path, three payments: $45 to PSI for the exam, $63.75 to PSI for electronic fingerprinting after you pass, and $60 to Minnesota - the $50 Accident/Health line fee plus the $10 technology surcharge, currently set well below the $40 ceiling Minn. Stat. 60K.55 allows. Sircon or NIPR adds its own transaction fee at checkout.
The fee does not scale with the paper. Minnesota charges a flat $45 whether you sit the 85-question Accident & Health paper in two hours or the 145-question combined paper in three. What scales is everything else: pre-licensing is 20 hours per line, and the licence fee is $50 per line.
Two lines in the table above are honest approximations rather than quotations. The application figure depends on a counting convention nobody has reconciled - the statute reads as $50 per line, while NIPR describes $50 per application plus $50 per line. And the fingerprinting figure depends on how you test: $63.75 electronically at a test centre or via PSI's walk-in hours, or $32.00 by check to Commerce if you mail a manually taken card. Choosing remote delivery does not remove the fingerprint step, it just moves it to a separate trip.
Pre-licensing tuition is the largest variable and Minnesota does not set it. The 20 hours are required, Commerce approves the providers and lists them through Sircon, and the provider sends electronic certification - but the price is the school's. Budget for it separately from the numbers above.
Eligibility Requirements
Complete 20 hours of Commerce-approved pre-licensing education for the Accident/Health line, then pass the exam, then get fingerprinted, then apply. The order is not advisory. Sit the exam before the coursework is finished and you forfeit the fee and the result does not count even if you pass - and Commerce publishes the sequence as education, exam, fingerprints, apply.
A designation can remove the coursework. It cannot remove the exam. Minnesota's handbook lists coursework exemptions by line, and for Health applicants the designations are RHU, CEBS, REBC or HIA. Two structural points about that list. First, it is introduced solely as an exemption from "the insurance producer prelicense education requirement" - no designation waives the Minnesota examination, so a candidate holding RHU still sits the full 75-item Accident & Health Producer paper. Second, the roster is published in the handbook only; the Commerce page gestures at exemptions without naming a single designation. Other exemption routes on the same list are academic rather than professional: a two-year Minnesota vocational school degree in insurance, or a four-year college degree in business with an insurance emphasis. The [Life & Health guide](/insurance/minnesota/life-and-health/licensing-guide) owns the pre-licensing walkthrough and the full roster.
If you already hold this line in another state, stop before you buy a course. A relocating producer may not need either step. The handbook says an applicant "who was previously licensed for the same lines of authority in another state need not complete any education or examination if the application is received within ninety (90) days after the cancellation of his license," and Commerce describes the same waiver in its own words as an exemption from Minnesota pre-licensing and the Minnesota exam where application is made "within 90 days of the resident license going inactive." Same ninety days, marginally different trigger language, and the two phrasings are worth reading side by side rather than harmonised. Statute separately waives pre-licensing for someone previously licensed in Minnesota for that line. The [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide) owns reciprocity and works the non-resident route, including the rule that a Minnesota non-resident licence terminates immediately if the underlying resident licence terminates.
Fingerprints are not optional and not waivable by designation. All producer applicants provide them. Note one clock inside the process: the background-check authorization form you sign expires one year after it is signed, so a candidate who passes, drifts, and applies eighteen months later is re-printing and re-paying. How long the completed check itself stays good is not published by any source read in this build.
A licence lets you be appointed; an appointment lets you sell. You may obtain the producer licence before any insurer appoints you, but an appointment is required to transact business in Minnesota (Minn. Stat. 60K.49). For this line that matters immediately on the long-term care side, because the insurer must obtain verification of your 60K.365 training before it permits you to sell its LTC products - so the carrier is gating you twice, on appointment and on training.
One thing this guide will not assert: the fact set behind it states a minimum age of 18 for adjusters only. No producer minimum age is published in the sources read here, so none is claimed.
Keeping the License
Important CE details: 24 credit hours each licensing period including 3 hours of ethics, plus a Minnesota split most states do not have: at least 12 of the 24 must not be sponsored by, offered by, or affiliated with an insurance company or its agents. No more than 8 hours may be credited in any single day, and you may not repeat a course for credit inside the same period. The requirement is per person rather than per line - 24 total however many lines you hold. Selling long-term care adds a producer training gate under Minn. Stat. 60K.365: 8 hours initially and 4 hours every 24 months after that, and those courses may be approved as continuing education under 60K.56, so they can consume part of the 24 rather than sitting on top of it. Commerce does not police that gate - it states that it does not track your long-term care training and that the insurer must obtain verification before it lets you sell its long-term care products. Course offerings, provider lookup and CE transcripts all run through Sircon, and the licence will not renew until that transcript reads compliant on or before the expiration date. Fall short and Minn. Stat. 60K.56 is blunt about the consequence: no license may be renewed or continued in force beginning the day after the renewal was due, and you may not act as an insurance producer until you have demonstrated compliance to the commissioner or obtained a waiver or extension. Producers writing solely for chapter 67A township mutuals are exempt from CE altogether.
24 credit hours each licensing period, 3 of them ethics - and Minnesota adds a split most states do not have. At least 12 of the 24 must not be sponsored by, offered by, or affiliated with an insurance company or its agents. Read that as written: it is a floor on independent education, not a ceiling on carrier education, and it means a producer who takes every hour through their carrier's free courses finishes the period non-compliant with 24 hours on the transcript. Ethics hours must be tagged in the Ethics category in Sircon to count.
Two mechanical limits. A maximum of 8 hours may be credited in any single day, which rules out clearing the whole requirement in a weekend. And you may not repeat a course for credit within the same licensing period, which rules out topping up with a convenient re-run.
The requirement is per person, not per line. Twenty-four hours total however many lines you hold - adding Property later does not make it forty-eight.
Long-term care is this line's own gate, and it is a training requirement rather than a pure CE requirement. Minn. Stat. 60K.365 attaches to a producer licensed for accident and health or sickness insurance or life insurance and requires an initial course of no less than eight hours plus ongoing training of no less than four hours every 24 months. The useful half is that those courses "may be approved as continuing education courses under section 60K.56" - so where the course carries both approvals the hours can count inside your 24 rather than on top of them. The half that catches people is enforcement: Commerce does not track it. The Department says so, and the statute puts the duty on the carrier - "Insurance companies must obtain verification that a producer has received the training required by this section before the producer is permitted to sell, solicit, or negotiate the insurer's long-term care insurance products." Your regulator will not chase you for it; your appointing insurer will simply not let you write the business.
Renewal keys to your birth month. The licence expires on the last day of the producer's birth month, on a term set to run at least 12 and no more than 24 months, so the steady state is biennial while your first term is stretched or trimmed to land on that month. You may renew no more than 90 days before the expiration date, at $50 per line of authority plus the current technology surcharge, and Commerce will not approve the renewal until your Sircon transcript reads compliant on or before the expiration date.
Miss the hours and the consequence is not a fine. Minn. Stat. 60K.56 says no license may be renewed or continued in force beginning the day after the renewal was due, and that the producer may not act as an insurance producer until they have demonstrated compliance to the commissioner or obtained a waiver or extension. Miss the renewal itself and the penalty is twice the unpaid renewal fee, with reinstatement available inside 12 months and no retesting; past twelve months you reapply, with potential retesting and re-fingerprinting. The [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide) owns renewal and works those tiers in full.
One exemption worth knowing about even though it will not be yours: producers writing solely for chapter 67A township mutual companies are exempt from continuing education altogether.
One documentation gap to be aware of, because you will trip over it: Commerce's own licence renewal page never states when a licence expires or how the date is assigned. It says only that you may renew no more than 90 days early. The birth-month rule is discoverable in Minn. Stat. 60K.55, subd. 2 and effectively nowhere else - not on the Commerce renewal page, not on Sircon's Minnesota page, not on NIPR's. That is a real hole in the operational documentation rather than an oversight in your reading.
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