Minnesota Life & Health Insurance Exam 2026

The Minnesota Life, Accident and Health Producer License

Minnesota's insurance regulator is the Minnesota Department of Commerce, not a Department of Insurance. Commerce also oversees banking, securities and energy, so the licensing pages you want sit under mn.gov/commerce rather than on a standalone insurance-department site. Get the name right on the exam too - the Minnesota block asks about the Commissioner of Commerce, who is appointed by the Governor with the advice and consent of the Senate, not elected.

Minnesota issues one producer licence that can list any of six lines - Life, Accident and Health or Sickness, Property, Casualty, Personal Lines, and Variable Life and Variable Annuity - plus limited lines. What people call a Life & Health licence is that one licence carrying two lines: Life and Accident and Health or Sickness. That two-ness runs through everything below. Two lines means two lots of pre-licensing hours and two $50 fee lines, even though it is one exam and one application.

Watch Minnesota's naming, because three official renderings of the health line are in circulation and all three are correct in their own document. Commerce writes it "Accident/Health". PSI writes it "Accident & Health Producer". Minn. Stat. 60K.365 speaks of a producer "licensed as an insurance producer for accident and health or sickness insurance." No single canonical short form has been confirmed, so recognise all three rather than memorising one.

Fixed annuities ride on the Life line, which is why the annuity best-interest duties in Minn. Stat. 72A.2032 and the free-look rules below are this guide's problem. Variable life and variable annuities are a separate line that sits on top, and they require FINRA registration because they are securities - the Life line does not quietly include them.

The path Commerce publishes has four steps in a fixed order: education, then exam, then fingerprints, then apply. Forty approved hours first. Then the 130-item paper at a PSI centre or remotely. Then fingerprints, taken electronically at the test centre after you pass, for $63.75. Then the application through Sircon, which is the Commerce Department's named front door, or through NIPR, which Minnesota also accepts. One honest wrinkle: NIPR's own Minnesota page says an applicant "is not required to pass the exam prior to submitting the license application," though an exam is still required before the state approves it. Commerce's ordering is the one to follow; NIPR is describing what its transaction system will accept.

Once issued, 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 your first term is stretched or trimmed to land on that month and every term after that is biennial. If you have read anywhere that Minnesota renews on October 31 based on an even or odd birth year, discard it - that fixed date survives in Minn. Stat. 60K.55 only as a legacy clause for licences issued before August 1, 2010, and the even/odd birth-year mechanism does not appear in the statute at all. Business entity licences, separately, do expire October 31. The renewal mechanics, the 90-day early window and the double-fee late penalty are worked in the [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide).

The Combined Paper, or the Two Single Lines

Minnesota prints real standalone Life and Accident & Health papers alongside the combined one, so the combined route is a choice rather than an obligation. Three separate content outlines exist, the bulletin's fee table lists all three exams as separate line items, and the time table gives the single-line papers two hours against the combined paper's three. Different documents, different instruments.

Life, Accident & Health Producer - 130 scored items in 3 hours, $45. The scored split is 50 Life product knowledge, terms and concepts; 50 Accident & Health product knowledge, terms and concepts; and 30 Minnesota laws, rules and regulations. Fifteen pretest items ride along on top, five per section, for 145 questions administered.

Life Producer and Accident & Health Producer - 75 scored items each, 2 hours each, $45 each. Both use the same shape: 50 general plus 25 Minnesota, with 5 pretest per section.

The arithmetic is worth doing once. Two single papers cost $90 and two sittings and four hours of testing and get you the same two lines. The combined paper costs $45 and one sitting and three hours. What splitting does buy you is the ability to get licensed on one line while you finish the other line's coursework - and it costs a second $45 for that flexibility. What splitting does not buy you is any reduction in classroom time: 20 hours per line is 40 hours either way.

Look closely at how Minnesota builds its 30 state items, because the structure is not what the headline number suggests. Every Minnesota producer paper carries a shared core block - "Minnesota Laws, Rules, and Regulations Common to Life, Health, Property, and Casualty Insurance," 20 items - plus a short line-specific tail. On a single-line paper there is one 5-item tail; on this combined paper there are two, one for Life and one for Accident & Health. So the genuinely life-and-health-specific state content is 10 items, and the other 20 are the common core that a Property & Casualty candidate sits as well. That changes how you study: two thirds of the state block is licensing law, trade practices, claims practices and the Commissioner's powers, not policy provisions.

Seventy percent to pass, and in Minnesota that is a raw percentage. The bulletin's score-reporting section says it plainly: "You will need 70% correct to pass the exam." The bulletin was searched for the words "scaled" and "raw" and for the standard scaled-score disclaimer, and none appears anywhere in its eleven pages, so you can reason about your own performance directly rather than against a scaled score you cannot see. Your score appears on screen at the end and a report is emailed; a failing report carries a diagnostic breakdown of strengths and weaknesses by examination type.

Two documents disagree about the pretest count, and both can be right. The bulletin says a small number, "5 to 15," of experimental questions may be administered, unscored but counting against your examination time. The content outlines instead specify exactly 5 pretest per section, which is 15 on this paper and 10 on a single-line paper. Fifteen sits inside the bulletin's envelope, so the outlines are the per-exam specification and the bulletin states the range. Either way you cannot identify them, and either way the clock is being spent on them.

Minnesota assigns no series or code numbers to its exams. The bulletin's fee table and time table carry columns for the exam name and the fee or the time, and nothing else. If a study site quotes you a series number for a Minnesota paper, it has imported it from another state.

One more option exists that most competitor material omits: the bulletin's table of contents lists a Spanish Content Outlines section alongside the English one, so Spanish-language delivery is part of the Minnesota programme. No Spanish exam name or item count was retrieved for this build, and the fee table carries a single $45 producer exam fee, so ask PSI directly rather than assuming a separate price.

The neighbouring mechanics belong to other guides in this set, and each is one link away. Where the nine Minnesota test centres are and how to book one is in the [Property guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-only/licensing-guide). Remotely proctored delivery, its launch window and its room rules are in the [Health guide](/insurance/minnesota/health-only/licensing-guide). Score reporting, the retake rule and the three-year validity of a passing result are in the [Personal Lines guide](/insurance/minnesota/personal-lines/licensing-guide). Fingerprinting is in the [Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/casualty-only/licensing-guide), and the Sircon and NIPR application is in the [Life guide](/insurance/minnesota/life-only/licensing-guide). What this guide owns is exam day and the coursework rule - the two steps that bracket the exam itself.

Most Tested Topics on the Minnesota Life and Health Exam

The 30 Minnesota items on this paper are 20 items of law common to all four lines plus a 5-item Life tail and a 5-item Accident & Health tail. Three subjects sit right at the intersection of those blocks and are worth disproportionate study, because each is a place where Minnesota's answer is not the national answer: the Life and Health Guaranty Association's limits, the free-look chain, and the continuing-education headline. All three are numeric, all three are quotable, and all three are taught wrongly by an outline written to the NAIC models.

Start with the guaranty limits, because they are the cleanest points on the paper and the easiest to get wrong. A national outline teaches the older NAIC model figures - $300,000 death benefit, $100,000 cash value, $300,000 annuity, and a health limit tiered three ways into $500,000 basic hospital, medical and surgical, $300,000 disability and long-term care, and $100,000 for everything else. Minnesota matches none of that. Its death benefit is $500,000. Its cash-value sub-limit is $130,000, which is not the model's $100,000 and does not round to it. Its health limit is a single flat $500,000 for health, long-term care and disability income together, with no tiering at all, so a question that asks you to sort a disability income claim into a lower tier is testing a distinction Minnesota does not draw. And $410,000 for structured settlement annuities is an odd enough number that it is either memorised or missed. Learn the operators along with the figures: subd. 4 opens "shall in no event exceed the lesser of," and clauses (5) and (6) both say "more than," so a claim of exactly $500,000 sits inside the aggregate rather than outside it. Then learn the one place the arithmetic surprises people - clause (7). For health benefits only, "any one life" means each individual covered, which is why a family of four on a single health policy gets four limits while a policyholder with a life policy and an annuity at the same failed insurer gets one $500,000 aggregate across both.

Then the free look, which is a location trap before it is a number trap. A prep course that goes looking in chapter 61A for Minnesota's life free look finds nothing, and some of them conclude out loud that Minnesota does not mandate one. Chapter 61A was read end to end for this build - 61A.03 including all of subd. 1's paragraphs, 61A.07, 61A.031, 61A.11 and the complete chapter section list - and it contains no free-look provision. The right is in the unfair trade practices chapter, at 72A.51, and it reaches life and annuities only because 72A.51, subd. 2 points at 60A.06, subd. 1, clause (4), the authority clause that covers making life and endowment contracts and granting annuities. Two consequences follow that a national outline will not give you. First, the same subdivision that carries life and annuities also carries individual sickness policies, nonprofit health service plan contracts and HMO subscriber contracts at the same 10 days, which is convenient on a combined licence - one section, one clock, both your lines. Second, that same subdivision expressly carves out Medicare-related coverage and long-term care, so the two products a candidate is most likely to assume are covered are the two that are not. Add the replacement figure - 30 days under 72A.52, subd. 1(2), running from the date the owner receives the policy - and the sanction for omitting the notice, which is a one-year cancellation right, and you have the whole chain. The [Life guide](/insurance/minnesota/life-only/licensing-guide) works the individual life policy provisions that surround it; what belongs to this combined paper is the chain itself.

Finish with the CE headline, which lives in the 20-item common core rather than in either line-specific tail - so it is on this paper twice over. Twenty-four hours and three of ethics are unremarkable, and that is exactly why candidates skim them. The Minnesota-specific piece is the split, and the trap is that the two official sources word it differently. The statute says no more than half of the hours may come from insurance-company-sponsored courses. Commerce says at least 12 of the 24 must not be sponsored by, offered by, or affiliated with an insurance company or its agents. The two sources state the same rule from opposite sides - the statute carries all three disqualifiers itself, barring courses "either sponsored by, offered by, or affiliated with an insurance company or its agents" - so 24 required, no more than half insurer-linked, therefore at least 12 not. The genuinely testable wrinkle is the carve-out: a course provided by a bona fide insurance trade association is not treated as insurer-linked, wherever it is held. Pair the split with the 8-hour daily credit cap, which quietly rules out clearing a whole period in one weekend, with the bar on repeating a course inside a period, and with the chapter 67A township mutual exemption - a carve-out for producers who write solely for chapter 67A township mutual fire companies, and exactly the sort of thing the 20-item common core reaches for. And know what a shortfall actually does, because the intuitive answer is wrong: it is not a fine. Under 60K.56 the licence cannot be renewed or continued beginning the day after the renewal was due, and the producer may not act as an insurance producer until compliance is demonstrated or a waiver obtained.

Exam Day in Minnesota - ID, Timing and What Stays in the Car

This is the module this guide owns for the whole Minnesota set, so it is written to be the page you read the night before, whatever line you are sitting. Three things decide whether the day goes smoothly: the identification you bring, the clock, and the pile of things you are not allowed to bring in. Minnesota's rules on all three are specific enough to be worth reading rather than skimming, and two of them catch people out every session.

One form of ID, and a seven-item list

PSI's requirement is short and absolute: "You must provide 1 form of identification." One, not two - Minnesota is not a two-ID state. But the one you bring has to clear four separate tests at once. The bulletin's condition is that the "ID must contain candidate's signature, photo, be valid and unexpired." Signature. Photo. Valid. Unexpired. A photo ID with no signature panel fails, and so does a signed card with no photograph.

The accepted list has seven items, and it is worth knowing all seven rather than the four everyone remembers:

Item seven is the one to read twice, because it is the only entry on the list that is expressly an expired document. Everything else on the list has to be unexpired; this one has to be expired, clipped, and accompanied. If your licence renewal is in progress and the state has clipped the corner of the old card and handed you a receipt, that pair is admissible - but it only works as a pair. The clipped licence on its own fails the unexpired test. The DMV renewal receipt on its own carries neither photo nor signature. Bring both, keep them together, and do not leave the receipt in the glovebox. If your renewal is in progress and you are missing one half of the pair, the cheapest fix is usually a passport rather than a rescheduled exam.

Item four is the other one, and it is a real asymmetry between the two ways of taking a Minnesota exam. A US Government Issued Military Identification Card is accepted at a test centre and is not accepted for remote testing. The carve-out is printed inside the list item itself, so it is easy to read past. If you are a service member planning to test from home on a military ID, you need a second document before you book - a state driver's licence, a state ID card or a passport. This is the single most likely way for a Minnesota candidate to lose a remotely proctored session before it starts.

One correction worth stating plainly, because it circulates: the driver's licence is on the Minnesota list, as item one. It was re-checked on a second, differently-worded pass for this build. Any page warning you that Minnesota does not accept a driver's licence is wrong.

The clock, and the two ways to lose $45

Arrive 15 minutes before your appointment. That is the bulletin's figure, and the consequence of missing it is not a warning: "If you arrive late, you may not be admitted to the examination site and you will forfeit your examination registration fee." Note the construction - it is may not be admitted, so it is discretionary rather than automatic, but the forfeiture is stated flatly. Fifteen minutes is the figure Minnesota publishes, and it is the time you should already be inside the building rather than the time you leave the car park, so build the drive and the check-in queue in around it.

If you need to move the appointment, the window is two days. The bulletin: "You may cancel and reschedule an examination appointment without forfeiting your fee if your cancellation notice is received 2 days before the scheduled examination date." Read received, not sent. Two days before the exam date, in PSI's hands. Inside that window, or as a no-show, the $45 is gone, because examination fees are not refundable or transferable.

There is a third, slower clock that catches people who register early and then let life happen: "Your examination fee will be forfeited if you do not test within 1 year of the date your examination fee is received by PSI." That is a different clock from the three-year validity of a passing score, and confusing the two is common. One year to use an unused fee; three years for a passing result to support an application.

What you may not bring in

Minnesota's prohibited-items list is long, specific, and organised into four families. The full list, in PSI's own terms:

Reference materials of any kind.

Electronic devices of any type, including but not limited to cellular phones, cameras, computers of any type such as laptops, tablets and iPads, earbuds, electronic games, electronic watches, handheld calculators, headsets, mobile devices, music players, pagers, radios, recording devices whether audio or video, smart watches and televisions.

Hats or headgear not worn for religious reasons or as religious apparel, including hats, baseball caps and visors.

Bulky or loose clothing or coats, including but not limited to open sweaters, cardigans, shawls, scarves, vests, jackets and coats.

Other personal items, including but not limited to backpacks, briefcases, chewing gum, drinks, food, good luck items, notebooks, paper or other materials on which to write, pens, pencils or other writing devices, purses, reading material, smoking or chewing products and wallets.

Three of those deserve a sentence each. The handheld calculator is prohibited - do not plan around bringing one to a paper with premium arithmetic on it. Electronic watches and smart watches are named, so an ordinary analogue watch is the safe choice if you want to track time off-screen. And the clothing rule is about layers, which matters in a Minnesota winter: an open cardigan or a coat you would normally keep on at your desk is on the list, so dress for a room you cannot add a layer in. Wallets and purses are on the list too, which is why arriving with car keys and one ID in your pocket is the least friction available.

The religious-apparel carve-out is written into the headgear rule itself rather than sitting in a separate accommodations paragraph - headgear worn for religious reasons or as religious apparel is outside the prohibition.

Two Minnesota-specific things to have with you

Your paper course-completion certificates. This is the Minnesota-specific item that has nothing to do with the security rules and everything to do with whether you are allowed to test at all. First-time producer applicants must present valid paper certificates matching the photo ID and the registration name. Paper. Matching. Both certificates, on this two-line licence. The pre-licensing section below covers what happens if you turn up without them, and it is not a warning.

Your credit card, for fingerprints. Fingerprinting is required of all Minnesota producer applicants, and the smooth version is captured electronically at the test centre after you sit for and pass the exam, once you have signed the background-check consent form. It is $63.75 by major credit card, covering the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension check, the FBI check and PSI's processing. Doing it on the same trip saves you a second journey; the alternative is a manual card at a police station and a $32.00 cheque mailed to Commerce. The [Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/casualty-only/licensing-guide) walks the whole background-check step, including the consent form's one-year life.

Testing from home instead

Minnesota candidates can choose their delivery at booking - "Select your test format: (Test Center) or (Remote Proctored)" - and remote sessions carry their own rule set, including a launch window, a compatibility check, no breaks at all, no scratch paper, and the military-ID exclusion noted above; the [Health guide](/insurance/minnesota/health-only/licensing-guide) covers remote proctoring in full.

Finally, on what happens after the last question: your score appears on screen and a report is emailed, and the only review of examination materials available to you is the in-exam Comments link, which lets you flag an item while you are sitting the paper. The [Personal Lines guide](/insurance/minnesota/personal-lines/licensing-guide) covers score reporting, the diagnostic report and retaking.

Minnesota's 20 Hours Per Line - and the Penalty for Testing Early

Minnesota is one of the states that will not let you sit the exam until you have finished a course, and the sanction attached to its version of the rule is worth reading twice before you book anything. This section is the deep treatment for the whole Minnesota set; the other six line guides point here.

The requirement, and why this licence owes 40 hours

Commerce states it in one sentence: "Before sitting for a licensing exam, insurance producer applicants must first complete the 20 hours of Minnesota Department of Commerce pre-approved insurance pre-license education per line of authority as required in MN Statute 60K.36 Subd.4." The statute says the same thing in its own words - "The course of study must consist of 20 hours per major line of authority in which the producer seeks to be licensed" - and the PSI bulletin repeats it as "20 hours of education per line of authority." Three sources, no conflict, and the requirement was checked specifically for a repeal or amendment: none was found, and it is live on both the Commerce page and the January 2026 handbook.

The words that matter are "per line of authority," and on a combined licence they cost you double. A Life, Accident & Health licence carries two lines - Life, and Accident and Health or Sickness. Twenty hours for Life plus twenty hours for Accident/Health is forty hours, and the combined exam does not shrink it. This is the single most common budgeting error on this line: a candidate prices one 20-hour course, books the exam, and finds out at the test centre that half the requirement is missing. The exam being combined has no bearing on the coursework, because the coursework is measured against lines of authority, not against papers.

Some providers package a combined Life-and-Health track as a single enrolment. That is fine, but check that the package delivers and certifies both lines' hours rather than one line's, and check what it will hand you at the end - see the certificate rule below.

The major lines the requirement attaches to are Life, Accident/Health, Property, Casualty and Personal Lines. It does not attach to Credit, Bail Bond, Title or Travel/Baggage, and adjusters have no pre-licensing education requirement at all, though the bulletin states the age-18 requirement for producers and adjusters alike.

The sequencing penalty - the rule to read twice

It would be reasonable to assume that testing before the coursework is finished is an administrative problem - a delayed result, a re-file, a phone call. In Minnesota it is not. Commerce's wording is worth quoting exactly, because its severity is the point:

"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."

Read the three consequences separately. The fee is forfeited - that is $45 gone, and examination fees are not refundable or transferable in any case. The results will not count - so the sitting is void, not merely delayed. And even if you pass - which closes the obvious hope that a good score might be held in escrow until the paperwork catches up. It will not be. There is no cure after the fact, no late-filed certificate that rescues the result, and nothing in the Commerce wording that distinguishes between missing one hour and missing forty.

On a combined licence, note the reach of "all applicable". Both lines' hours are applicable. Finishing the Life twenty and sitting the 130-item paper with the Accident/Health twenty outstanding puts you squarely inside that sentence.

Certificates: paper, matching, and doubled up by the provider

The bulletin's requirement at the test centre is that first-time producer applicants present valid paper course-completion certificates matching the photo ID and the registration name. Three conditions in one clause.

Paper. A PDF on a phone does not satisfy it, and phones are on the prohibited-items list anyway - so print the certificates before you leave, not at the test centre.

Matching the photo ID. The name on the certificate has to line up with the name on the identification you bring, which is a live problem for anyone who has recently married, divorced or anglicised a name. Fix the mismatch with the provider before the exam date rather than arguing it at check-in.

Matching the registration name. That is a third name to align - the one you used when you booked with PSI. Book in exactly the form your ID carries, and ask the provider to issue in the same form.

Alongside your paper copy, the provider has its own duty to send electronic certification. That is belt and braces rather than an alternative: the electronic certification is the provider's obligation, and the paper certificate is yours. Do not treat the provider's upload as a substitute for the printout.

One thing no source read for this build addresses: whether a Minnesota course-completion certificate expires. Neither the Commerce page nor the statute nor the bulletin states an expiry position, so treat it as an open question rather than assuming a deadline in either direction - and, practically, do not let months pile up between the course and the exam.

Finding an approved provider

Course providers are listed through Sircon, at www.sircon.com/minnesota, which is the same platform Commerce uses for applications, renewals, CE transcripts and provider lookup. The course has to be pre-approved by the Department of Commerce; a course that is merely good is not the same as a course that is approved, and the burden of checking sits with you.

TESTivity recommends Achievable for the coursework - its insurance courses were built by the same subject-matter expert behind TESTivity, and completing a course earns the certificate of completion Minnesota requires. Two boundaries to be explicit about. TESTivity itself is not an approved Minnesota pre-licensing provider and does not issue certificates of completion - the TESTivity tools will help you pass the paper, but they are a supplement to an approved course, never a substitute for it. And because Minnesota's approval is provider-by-provider and course-by-course, confirm your chosen course on the Commerce and Sircon list before you enrol, and confirm it covers both lines. (Disclosure: TESTivity has a partnership with Achievable and may earn a commission if you enrol through links on this page.)

Exemption list A - the COURSEWORK only

The bulletin carries a list introduced with the words "The following will be exempt from the insurance producer prelicense education requirement:" Every entry on it exempts you from the hours. Nothing on it touches the exam.

Two observations that matter specifically on a combined application. First, the three designation bullets are line-scoped and the two degree bullets are not - the handbook attaches the designations to Life applicants, Health applicants and property-side applicants respectively, while the vocational-degree and business-degree entries are written without a line restriction. Second, and more usefully: CEBS is the one credential named on both the Life list and the Health list. A CLU exempts the twenty Life hours and leaves the twenty Accident/Health hours to do; CEBS is named on both sides. CIC appears twice as well, but on the Life list and the property-side list, which does not help a Life-and-Health applicant with the health half.

Then the rule that decides more exam items than the roster itself: no designation waives the Minnesota examination. List A is introduced solely as an exemption from the pre-licensing education requirement, and no exam-waiver language attaches to any designation anywhere in the bulletin. Holding CLU exempts you from 20 hours of Life coursework and you still sit the 75-item Life Producer paper - or, on this line, the 130-item combined paper. The letters after your name buy you classroom time back. They do not buy you the exam.

Exemption list B - BOTH education AND the exam, and it is not a designation list

There is a genuine exam waiver in Minnesota, and it does a completely different job. It has nothing to do with credentials and everything to do with where you were licensed last:

"An applicant for licensing in this state 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."

Commerce describes the same waiver in its own words, and the wording is close but not identical: applicants "are exempt from taking MN pre-licensing or passing the MN exam if application for the MN resident license is made within 90 days of the resident license going inactive." Same ninety days, marginally different trigger - the handbook says after the cancellation of his license, Commerce says of the resident license going inactive. Both are reported here rather than harmonised, because which event starts the clock is exactly the sort of detail that decides a borderline application.

Note the reach of "the same lines of authority" on a combined licence: the waiver covers the lines you actually held. If your prior state licence carried Life but not Accident/Health, the waiver reaches Life and leaves the health half to be earned the ordinary way.

A related waiver sits in the statute rather than the handbook: 60K.36, subd. 4 waives pre-licensing where the applicant was previously licensed in Minnesota for that line. That is a re-entry rule, not a relocation rule, and it is education-only.

The mechanics of actually moving a licence into Minnesota - the NAIC Producer Database test, non-resident licensing, the letter of clearance and which direction it runs - belong to the [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide), which owns reciprocity for this set. What belongs here is the education side: within 90 days, no coursework and no exam; outside it, both.

A documentation gap you should know about

The designation exemptions above appear in the PSI handbook and effectively nowhere else a candidate can reach. The Commerce resident-producer page gestures at them - it refers to "a list of exemptions to the prelicensing education and corresponding documentation the applicant must present to the exam center" - but it names not a single designation and carries no working hyperlink to the list. The anchor was looked for specifically for this build and none exists on that page. Minn. Stat. 60K.36, subd. 4 carries the prior-Minnesota-licensure waiver but not this roster. So if you hold one of those thirteen sets of letters and want to skip the hours, the handbook is the document to print and bring, and the "corresponding documentation" the Commerce page mentions is what you present at the exam centre alongside it.

What It Costs

Four payments, two payees. PSI takes $45 for the exam and $63.75 for fingerprints; the Department of Commerce takes $50 per line of authority plus the technology surcharge, collected through Sircon or NIPR. On this two-line licence that is $45 plus $63.75 plus $100 plus $10, or about $218.75 on a first-attempt pass, before coursework and before the portal's own transaction fee.

The exam fee is not priced by length. Minnesota charges $45 for a 2-hour, 75-item single-line producer paper and $45 for this 3-hour, 130-item combined paper. That is why the combined route is cheaper in absolute terms than sitting Life and Accident & Health separately - $45 against $90 - and why splitting them is a decision about sequencing rather than about money. Adjuster exams, for contrast, are $25.

The technology surcharge is a moving number, so check it. Minn. Stat. 60K.55 authorises a surcharge of up to $40 on each initial licence and renewal; the amount actually administered has been $10 since May 1, 2023, per the Sircon Minnesota page. The $10 is the figure to budget and the $40 is the ceiling, and the two are frequently confused - a 2020 Commerce temporary-licence guidance document still posted on the Commerce server quotes $25 to $30, which is superseded.

One fee line here is genuinely unsettled. Minn. Stat. 60K.55 reads as $50 per line of authority, which makes a two-line licence $100. NIPR's Minnesota page describes $50 per application with an additional $50 charged per line of authority, which on the same licence would be $150. The likeliest reconciliation is a counting convention in which NIPR's "application" fee is the first line's $50, but no source states it and neither figure has been reconciled against the other. The table below uses the statute's counting; budget for the possibility of the higher one.

What is not on this list. No source read for this build publishes a separate charge for choosing remote proctoring over a test centre, or any charge for adding a line later beyond that line's own $50 and its own exam. A company appointment costs $30, paid by the appointing insurer rather than by you, though that figure comes from 2020 guidance and has not been re-verified. And pre-licensing tuition is entirely yours to shop - Commerce publishes no price and, on this line, you are buying 40 hours.

Eligibility Requirements

Be at least 18. The age requirement is stated in the PSI bulletin's Prelicensing Requirements section; the bulletin opens the PRODUCER paragraph with it - "Must be at least 18 years of age." - and repeats it for adjusters.

Complete 40 hours of Commerce-approved pre-licensing education - 20 per line, for Life and for Accident/Health - and bring the paper certificates to the test centre. That is the gate the pre-licensing section covers in full, including the exemptions and the sanction for testing early.

Pass the Life, Accident & Health Producer exam at 70%. A passing result is good for three years from the date of the examination, which is the effective deadline for filing the application. That three-year figure is Commerce's, and it should not be confused with the separate one-year clock that forfeits an unused examination fee.

Be fingerprinted. The bulletin is categorical - "ALL applicants for Producer and Adjuster licenses must provide a set of fingerprints" - and Commerce sequences it after the exam: fingerprints are taken electronically at the PSI test centre after you sit for and pass, for $63.75, or manually by mail with a $32.00 cheque to the Department of Commerce, 85 7th Place East, Suite 280, St. Paul, MN 55101. The consent form you sign expires one year after it is signed, which is the practical reason not to leave a long gap between passing and applying. Whether the completed background-check results have their own shelf life is not stated by any source read for this build. Full walkthrough in the [Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/casualty-only/licensing-guide).

File the application through Sircon or NIPR. Sircon is the Commerce Department's named front door and the platform Minnesota's licensing relationship runs on - applications, renewals, reinstatements, status enquiries, licence printing, certification letters, provider lookup and CE transcripts all live there. NIPR also accepts Minnesota resident applications. Step-by-step in the [Life guide](/insurance/minnesota/life-only/licensing-guide).

Get appointed before you transact. An individual may hold a Minnesota producer licence before being appointed by an insurer, but an appointment is required in order to transact business in Minnesota. The licence lets you be appointed; the appointment lets you sell.

If you already hold a Life or Accident/Health licence in another state, read the exemption section before you do anything else. An applicant previously licensed for the same lines in another state need not complete any education or examination if the application is received within 90 days after cancellation of that licence - so on the right timeline the entire 40 hours and the entire 130-item paper come out of the sequence. Outside 90 days, both come back.

Temporary licences exist but are not a route in for an ordinary new applicant. Minn. Stat. 60K.42 allows a temporary producer licence for up to 180 days without an examination, and only in four situations: to the surviving spouse or court-appointed personal representative of a producer who dies or becomes disabled; to a member or employee of a licensed business entity after the death or disability of its designated individual; to the designee of a producer entering active service in the armed forces; and where the Commissioner considers the public interest will best be served. The Commissioner may limit the authority granted and may require a licensed sponsor, and the licence may not continue after the owner or the personal representative disposes of the business.

Keeping the License

Twenty-four credit hours per licensing period, three of them in ethics - and the licensing period is the licence term, which runs to the last day of your birth month on a span of at least 12 and no more than 24 months. Both numbers come from two agreeing sources: Minn. Stat. 60K.56, subd. 6 and the Commerce Department's Education for Licensees page. Ethics courses have to be tagged in the Ethics category in Sircon to count, so a course that is ethical in subject matter but categorised as something else will not fill that block.

Holding two lines does not double the requirement. Twenty-four hours is a per-person figure, not a per-line one, so a Life, Accident & Health producer owes the same 24 as a single-line producer - unlike the pre-licensing rule, which is expressly per line of authority. That asymmetry between 60K.36 and 60K.56 is worth holding onto: coursework is per line, continuing education is per person.

The Minnesota-specific rule is the independence split, and it is worded two ways. The statute bars crediting more than half the hours to courses "either sponsored by, offered by, or affiliated with an insurance company or its agents". Commerce states the same rule from the other side: at least 12 of the 24 must not be sponsored by, offered by, or affiliated with an insurance company or its agents. Commerce's version reaches further - a course offered by or affiliated with a carrier fails it even without sponsorship - so plan to the Commerce wording. Practically, this means a producer who takes everything through their own carrier's training portal will finish the period compliant on hours and non-compliant on the split.

Two pacing rules constrain how you get there. No more than 8 hours may be credited in any single day, which rules out clearing a period in one weekend. And you may not repeat a continuing education course for credit during the same licensing period, so topping up with a course you already enjoyed is not available. Where credit comes from passing a professional designation examination, the statute also bars double credit for both the preparatory coursework and the examination itself.

One exemption, and it is Minnesota's own. Section 60K.56 "does not apply to persons soliciting or selling solely on behalf of companies organized and operating according to chapter 67A" - the township mutual fire companies. If everything you write goes to a township mutual, the section does not reach you. Note the word solely.

Two product gates can attach to this licence, and both follow the product rather than the line. Long-term care, under Minn. Stat. 60K.365, requires an initial course of no less than eight hours plus ongoing training of no less than four hours every 24 months, for a producer licensed for accident and health or sickness insurance or life insurance - and those courses may be approved as continuing education under 60K.56, so they can do double duty. The administration is the unusual part: the insurer, not Commerce, is the party that must obtain verification that a producer has been trained before letting them sell its long-term care products, and Commerce states it does not track your long-term care training. Annuities, under Minn. Stat. 72A.2032, require a one-time training course - a producer obtaining life authority on or after 1 January 2023 must complete the four-credit course before engaging in the sale of annuities, while agents already qualified as of 31 December 2022 could take either the four-credit course or a one-time one-credit bridge course by 1 July 2023. Whether those annuity credits count toward the 24 is not addressed by the Commerce page either way, so do not plan on them.

A shortfall is not a fine. Under 60K.56, if the requirement is not met, no licence may be renewed or continued in force beginning the day after the renewal was due, and the person may not act as an insurance producer until they have demonstrated compliance to the Commissioner's satisfaction or obtained a waiver or extension. The Commissioner may allow up to 90 days to complete the requirement for good cause. Your Sircon transcript has to read compliant on or before the expiration date before a renewal is approved, and providers upload completions to Sircon, so leave room for their reporting rather than finishing on the last afternoon.

One question no Minnesota source read for this build answers: carryover. Neither 60K.56 nor the Commerce CE page says whether excess hours may be carried into the next period, in either direction. Treat it as unresolved rather than assuming the answer, and plan each period on its own hours.

The renewal transaction itself - the 90-day early window, the $50 per line plus surcharge renewal fee, the double-fee late penalty, the 12-month reinstatement window and what happens beyond it - belongs to the [Property & Casualty guide](/insurance/minnesota/property-and-casualty/licensing-guide).

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