The Mississippi Accident & Health Producer License
Mississippi calls this line "accident and health or sickness" - the full phrase, not "health" - and it appears at Miss. Code Ann. §83-17-63(1)(b). It authorises you to solicit and sell accident, sickness, disability, Medicare supplement, long-term care and group health products. The Pearson VUE exam carries the same name, which matters when you are booking: the scheduling page lists MS Accident & Health or Sickness Producer, and a candidate looking for "health" alone can miss it.
This line sits on the 65% side of Mississippi's split passing standard, alongside Life and the combined Life/Accident & Health exam. Property, Casualty, combined Property & Casualty and Personal Lines all pass at 70%. Mississippi reports a raw percentage, not a scaled score, so 65% means 39 of 60 scored questions - there is no conversion and no curve.
Unlike a life applicant, you owe the 20 hours of approved pre-licensing education that §83-17-251(2) requires per line of authority. House Bill 819 of 2024 added an exemption at subsection (2)(h), but it is written for an individual "seeking licensure for the life line of authority only," and accident and health is not life. If you intend to take both lines together, the interaction of that word "only" with a combined application is genuinely unresolved - MID has published nothing on it - and it is worth a call to Licensing before you buy a course.
The substantive law is where this line diverges most sharply from its life sibling. Mississippi has no standard-provisions statute for individual life insurance; grace, incontestability and reinstatement come from MID's form-filing standards. For accident and health it legislated the whole set. §83-9-5 is Mississippi's enactment of the uniform individual accident and sickness policy provision law, with each provision at its own lettered subparagraph and each number stated on the face of the statute. That means health questions on the Mississippi Laws portion of the exam have hard, citable answers - and one of them, the claim-payment clock at §83-9-5(1)(h), is a Mississippi deviation from the model that no national course will teach you.
Two Routes to a Mississippi Health Authority
The standalone Accident & Health or Sickness Producer exam is 60 scored questions plus 10 unscored pretest questions in 120 minutes - the counts come from content outline #122501 (December 2024), the seat time from candidate handbook #122500 (July 2025). Neither document carries both numbers, which is why you occasionally see Mississippi summaries that state a question count with no time or a time with no count.
The combined Life, Accident & Health or Sickness Producer exam is 115 scored plus 10 pretest in 150 minutes. Compare the arithmetic before you decide: taking Life and Accident & Health separately is 120 scored questions across 240 minutes of seat time and two $50 fees; the combined exam is 115 scored questions in 150 minutes and one $50 fee. The combined route is cheaper and shorter in total, and it is also less forgiving - a single 65% covers both bodies of material, and a fail costs you both lines.
Online proctoring is not available for this exam. Pearson VUE's live Mississippi page states that OnVUE "is currently unavailable" for the MS Life Producer, the MS Accident & Health or Sickness Producer and the MS Life, Accident & Health or Sickness Producer exams - all three of the exams on the 65% side. It remains available for Property, Casualty, Property & Casualty and Personal Lines. The July 2025 handbook still prints "Yes" in the OnVUE column for every producer exam; the live page reflects current operations and the handbook does not. The Casualty guide covers remote testing end to end for the exams that still have it.
Because you will be testing at a centre, the retake rules that apply to you are the centre rules, and they are the generous ones: the handbook says a candidate "must wait one (1) day before scheduling a reexamination" and, in the next sentence, that "Testing at a test center is unlimited." The OnVUE limits - two attempts and a 14-day wait before retesting - do not reach you.
One scheduling detail costs candidates real money. Rescheduling or cancelling is free if you call Pearson VUE on (888) 293-4222 at least 48 hours before the appointment, and inside that window the entire $50 is forfeited. Reservations for a retake cannot be made at the test centre itself.
Most Tested Topics on the Mississippi Health Exam
Mississippi's accident and health law is genuinely legislated, which makes the Mississippi Laws portion of this exam more answerable than the life one - and it makes the numbers worth memorising precisely, because several of them deviate from the national model. The table below is drawn from §83-9-5, §83-9-51, §83-9-111 and Title 19.
| Concept | Mississippi rule | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Clean claim payment, electronic submission | 25 days after receipt of due written proof of loss in the form of a clean claim | §83-9-5(1)(h) |
| Clean claim payment, paper submission | 35 days - Mississippi is one of the states that splits the deadline by submission channel | §83-9-5(1)(h) |
| Interest on a late clean claim | Three percent (3%) PER MONTH, accruing from the day after payment was due, paid to the provider or the insured, until the claim is settled or adjudicated | §83-9-5(1)(h) |
| Clean claim, what it means | A claim "which requires no further information, adjustment or alteration by the provider of the services or the insured in order to be processed and paid" | §83-9-5(1)(h) |
| Notice of claim | Written notice within 30 days after the occurrence or commencement of the loss, "or as soon thereafter as is reasonably possible" - a Mississippi deviation from the NAIC uniform provision, which uses 20 days | §83-9-5(1)(e) |
| Time limit on certain defenses, accident and health | Two years from date of issue, after which no misstatement in the application - fraudulent misstatements excepted - may be used to void the policy | §83-9-5(1)(b) |
| Grace period, tiered by premium mode | 7 days for weekly premium policies, 10 days for monthly premium policies, 31 days for all others | §83-9-5(1)(c) |
| Reinstatement by conditional receipt | Where the insurer requires a reinstatement application, the policy is reinstated on the FORTY-FIFTH day after the conditional receipt unless the insurer has already given written notice of disapproval | §83-9-5(1)(d) |
| Claim forms deadline | If the insurer does not furnish claim forms within 15 days of notice of claim, the claimant is deemed to have complied with the proof requirements | §83-9-5(1)(f) |
| Proofs of loss deadline | 90 days after the termination of the period for which the insurer is liable, or 90 days after the date of loss | §83-9-5(1)(g) |
| State continuation, duration and cost | 12 months of continued group coverage at not more than the full group rate, after three consecutive months of prior coverage | §83-9-51(3), (6), (7)(a) |
| State continuation, employer size | NONE - §83-9-51 applies to every insured group policy delivered in Mississippi; the small-group effect comes from an eligibility exclusion for anyone eligible for federal COBRA | §83-9-51(2), (4) |
| External review, binding effect | The independent review organization's decision "is binding on the health carrier except to the extent the health carrier has other remedies available under applicable State law" | 19 Miss. Admin. Code Pt. 3, R. 15.10 |
| External review, filing windows | Four MONTHS after receipt of an adverse or final adverse determination for standard review; an expedited request may be filed at receipt, with the IRO deciding in no more than 72 hours | 19 Miss. Admin. Code Pt. 3, R. 15.07(A), 15.08(E)(1) |
| Right to return an accident and health policy | Not less than 10 days from delivery, on a notice printed on or attached to the policy, excepting travel and nonrenewable accident policies; returned in time the contract "shall be void from the beginning, and the parties shall be in the same position as if no policy or service contract had been issued" | §83-9-25 |
| Medicaid expansion status | Mississippi has NOT adopted the ACA Medicaid expansion; the Division of Medicaid's coverage groups contain no adult expansion category, and the state uses the federally facilitated marketplace | Mississippi Division of Medicaid |
The three percent per month interest rate is the single most distinctive number on this list, and it is the one candidates most often get wrong because they carry a half-percent or one-and-a-half-percent figure over from another state. Read the statutory sentence: the insurer "must pay ... interest on accrued benefits at the rate of three percent (3%) per month accruing from the day after payment was due." Note the two different clocks - the 25 or 35 days run from receipt of a clean claim, while interest runs from the day after payment was due. A claim that is not clean does not start the payment clock at all.
The second trap is Mississippi's continuation statute, and it is a trap because the true answer is a negative. Every summary you will read - including the previous edition of this guide - describes §83-9-51 as covering "employers with fewer than 20 employees." That is not what the statute says. Subsection (2) applies to any group accident and health policy delivered or issued for delivery in Mississippi. What produces the small-group effect is subsection (4), an individual eligibility exclusion: continuation is unavailable to anyone "who is eligible for continuation under the provisions of the federal Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act," or who could be covered by other group coverage within 31 days, or who is entitled to Medicare. If an exam item asks what size employer Mississippi's continuation law applies to, the correct answer is that it sets no size threshold.
Finally, note what Mississippi does not have on the claims side. Its unfair trade practices statute at §83-5-35 is the frozen 1956 NAIC model with nine enumerated acts and no unfair claims settlement practices list, and Mississippi has adopted no separate unfair claims act - the NAIC's own model-adoption chart records "no current activity" for Model 900. §83-9-5(1)(h) is therefore the only statutory claim-payment deadline in Mississippi insurance law, and it reaches health claims alone. The one adjacent statutory claim rule outside health is §83-7-6, which makes life proceeds due as of the date of death and runs interest from that date - but it fixes no deadline. Property and casualty claim conduct is governed by common-law bad faith. That asymmetry is a favourite exam construction.
Mississippi's Background Disclosure: What the Application Actually Asks
Mississippi is one of the states where the background step is not a process you schedule but a set of questions you answer, and understanding why changes how carefully you should answer them.
There is no fingerprinting and no criminal history record check for producers. This is a well-supported negative, not an omission in our research. §83-17-61, the application section, requires the uniform application and a truthful declaration and says nothing about fingerprints or record checks. §83-17-63, §83-17-67 and §83-17-71 are equally silent. Fingerprinting exists in Mississippi insurance law, but it belongs to the bail agent regime at §83-39-3(7)(c), which expressly requires a bail agent applicant to submit a set of fingerprints for state and federal record checks, and whose fingerprint instructions and request forms sit exclusively under bail agent licensing on MID's site. Older material - including the previous edition of this guide - stated that "a state and federal criminal history background check is run from your application." That statement is bail-agent language mis-applied to producers, and it is wrong.
What replaces it is self-disclosure plus after-the-fact enforcement. §83-17-61 requires you to make the application "on the uniform application" and to declare "under penalty of refusal, suspension or revocation of the license that the statements made in the application are true, correct and complete." That declaration is the screening mechanism. It is why ground (a) of §83-17-71 - "[p]roviding incorrect, misleading, incomplete or materially untrue information in the license application" - is a licence ground standing on its own, entirely apart from whatever you failed to disclose.
The fourteen grounds. §83-17-71(1) lets the Commissioner place on probation, suspend, revoke, or refuse to issue or renew a producer licence, or levy a civil penalty not exceeding $1,000 per violation, on fourteen enumerated grounds, (a) through (n): (a) incorrect, misleading, incomplete or materially untrue information in the application; (b) violating an insurance law, regulation, subpoena or order of the Commissioner or of another state's commissioner; (c) obtaining or attempting to obtain a licence through misrepresentation or fraud; (d) improperly withholding, misappropriating or converting monies or properties received in the course of doing insurance business; (e) intentionally misrepresenting the terms of an actual or proposed contract or application; (f) having been convicted of a felony; (g) having admitted or been found to have committed an insurance unfair trade practice or fraud; (h) using fraudulent, coercive or dishonest practices, or demonstrating incompetence, untrustworthiness or financial irresponsibility; (i) having a producer licence denied, suspended or revoked in any other state; (j) forging another's name to an application or a document related to an insurance transaction; (k) improperly using notes or reference material to complete an examination; (l) knowingly accepting insurance business from an unlicensed individual; (m) failing to comply with a child support obligation; and (n) failing to pay state income tax or comply with a court order directing payment.
Three of those deserve separate attention because they trip up applicants who have nothing at all in their criminal history. Ground (k) - using notes in an examination - is a licensing ground, which is one reason the exam-day rules in the Life & Health guide are worth reading before you sit. Grounds (m) and (n) are about child support and state income tax and have nothing to do with insurance conduct. And ground (f), felony conviction, is a ground for action rather than an automatic disqualification - the Commissioner may act, and the section is drafted permissively throughout.
Documenting a disclosure. Where an answer requires it, attach the court documents: the charging instrument, the disposition or judgment, and evidence of completion of any sentence or probation. Because the uniform application is served through the NIPR or Sircon flow rather than published as a MID form, you will not see the exact wording of the questions until you are inside the application. Answer them as of the date you file, and remember §83-17-81 - a producer must report administrative actions and criminal prosecutions to the Commissioner, so the duty does not end when the licence issues.
Surrendering does not end an investigation. §83-17-71(5) provides that the Commissioner retains authority to enforce and to impose penalties against a person under investigation "even if the person's license or registration has been surrendered or has lapsed by operation of law." That is an anti-escape clause, not a voluntary-surrender procedure. Separately, a producer whose licence is revoked may not reapply for one year, and longer if judicial review extends it.
Mississippi Accident & Health License Fees
| Item | Amount | Paid to | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-licensing course, 20 hours | Provider-set; MID approves courses but publishes no price | Approved education provider | §83-17-251(2) |
| Accident & Health or Sickness examination | $50 per attempt | Pearson VUE | Handbook #122500 fee table |
| Resident producer licence | $100 per licence | Mississippi Insurance Department | §27-15-87(1) |
| Portal transaction fee | About $1 | NIPR or Sircon | NIPR and Sircon fee schedules |
| Adding the Life line later | $25 | Mississippi Insurance Department | §27-15-87(2) |
| Fingerprinting / background check | Not required and not charged for producers | - | no producer authority in Title 83 |
| Long-term care producer training | Not required in Mississippi | - | 19 Miss. Admin. Code Pt. 3, Rules 8.01-8.19 contain no training rule |
| Annuity producer training (if you add Life) | One-time four credits | Approved education provider | 19 Miss. Admin. Code Pt. 2, R. 18.07(B)(1) |
Two of those rows are worth reading as savings. Mississippi charges you nothing for a background check because it runs none. And it imposes no long-term care producer training requirement at all, notwithstanding that the NAIC's model-adoption chart lists Mississippi under Model 641 and that CE vendors sell an "MS 8-hour initial LTC certification" - the regulation Mississippi actually adopted, Chapter 8 of Title 19 Part 3, runs Rules 8.01 through 8.19 and has no training section in it. If you are quoted for LTC certification as a Mississippi requirement, ask which rule imposes it.
The 20-hour course is the variable, and the only one. Price it across two or three MID-approved providers; the statute fixes the hours and the approval, not the fee.
Mississippi Accident & Health License Eligibility
Eighteen years of age, under §83-17-61 - the application section carries the age requirement, not the examination section. A truthful uniform application, with the declaration under penalty of refusal, suspension or revocation. Twenty hours of approved pre-licensing education for the accident and health or sickness line under §83-17-251(2), unless you fall inside one of the exemptions.
The pre-licensing exemptions at §83-17-251(2) are worth reading against your own history, because four of them can apply to a health applicant. Subsection (a) exempts anyone exempt from the written examination under §83-17-39(1) or §83-17-67. Subsection (b) exempts an individual holding a bachelor's degree "with major coursework in insurance from an accredited institution of higher learning." Subsection (d) exempts a holder of a current and valid RHU, CEBS, REBC or HIA designation - for the accident and health or sickness line specifically. Subsection (f) exempts limited lines and limited lines credit producers.
Read subsection (d) carefully, though, because it does exactly one thing. It exempts you from the coursework. It does not exempt you from the exam. The examination waivers live in a different statute, §83-17-39(1)(a) through (g), and that list contains no professional designations at all - it covers renewals, ticket-selling agents of railroads, steamship, air and bus carriers, credit insurance written on borrowers, recently suspended applicants at the Commissioner's discretion, exclusive fraternal benefit society agents, and §83-17-67 applicants. An RHU or HIA holder in Mississippi skips twenty hours of class and still sits the sixty-question exam. The Property & Casualty guide sets the two lists side by side.
Nothing else is a condition. There is no residency period, no bond, no minimum net worth, no character references, and no fingerprint card. The disciplinary grounds at §83-17-71 - the fourteen listed in the background section above - operate on the licence after it issues rather than as eligibility filters before it does.
Mississippi Accident & Health Continuing Education
Important CE details: 12 hours if your licence has been in effect for a term of eighteen months or less; 24 hours, including 3 hours of ethics, if the term is longer. That split is statutory - §83-17-251(3) - and the ethics component exists only in the 24-hour band. Accident and health producers should note two things beyond the hour count. First, Mississippi has NOT adopted the NAIC long-term care producer training model: Chapter 8 of Title 19 Part 3 runs Rules 8.01 through 8.19 and contains no training rule at all, so there is no 8-hour initial or 4-hour ongoing LTC requirement here despite what CE vendors advertise. Second, the flood training you may see referenced is federal, not Mississippi - FEMA requires three hours only if you have signed up for the NFIP Agent Leads Referral Program. Nothing carries forward, a repeated course counts once per period, and your provider files the completion through Sircon within 15 calendar days.
The hour count is set by §83-17-251(3) and turns on the length of your licence term rather than on a fixed biennial figure: 12 hours for a licence "in effect for a term of eighteen (18) months or less" and 24 hours for a term "of more than eighteen (18) months," of which 3 hours must concentrate in ethics. The ethics requirement belongs only to the 24-hour sentence. MID renders the bands as 13-18 and 19-24 months because a Mississippi first term cannot be shorter than 13 months.
For an accident and health producer the more consequential question is usually what additional training applies, and the answer in Mississippi is: less than you have been told.
Long-term care training is not required. 19 Miss. Admin. Code Pt. 3, Ch. 8 is Mississippi's long-term care insurance regulation, and its rules run 8.01 Purpose, 8.02 Authority, 8.03 Applicability and Scope, 8.04 Definitions, 8.05 Policy Definitions, 8.06 Disclosure and Performance Standards, 8.07 Policy Practices and Provisions, 8.08 Required Disclosure Provisions, 8.09 Prohibition against Post-Claims Underwriting, 8.10 Minimum Standards for Home Health Care Benefits, 8.11 Requirement to Offer Inflation Protection, 8.12 Requirements for Replacement, 8.13 Discretionary Powers, 8.14 Reserve Standards, 8.15 Loss Ratio, 8.16 Filing Requirement, 8.17 Standard Format Outline of Coverage, 8.18 Requirement to Deliver Shopper's Guide and 8.19 Effective Date. There is no training rule anywhere in that list, and the Mississippi Long-Term Care Partnership Program statutes at §§43-13-601 through 43-13-607 contain none either. What Chapter 8 does give you is the 30-day free look at Rule 8.06(D), and what MID does require is the accident and health line of authority itself.
Flood training is federal and conditional. MID's guidance states that FEMA requires three hours of flood training "if the agent has signed up for the NFIP Agent Leads Referral Program." It is not a universal Mississippi CE requirement and it is not imposed by MID.
Annuity training is required if you add the Life line. 19 Miss. Admin. Code Pt. 2, R. 18.07(B)(1) requires a one-time four-credit course, and R. 18.07(A) separately requires the insurer's product-specific training. This is the one training mandate on the life and health side that Mississippi genuinely imposes, The amended best-interest regulation took effect 1 January 2022 and applied to acts on or after 1 July 2022; the one-credit update at R. 18.07(B)(6) was available only to producers who had already completed an approved annuity course before that date.
Mechanics. No carryover - surplus hours die at the compliance date. A course repeated inside the same licence period earns credit once. Providers file completions through Sircon within 15 calendar days. Five categories are exempt under §83-17-251(4): the §83-17-39(1)(b), (c), (e) and (g) exam-waiver categories; limited lines and limited line credit producers; non-residents meeting home-state CE where a reciprocal agreement exists; non-active agents; and producers who were 65 or older with 25 or more continuous years of licensure as of 17 April 2023, on a sworn affidavit.
If you let the licence lapse, §83-17-63 allows reinstatement within twelve months of the renewal due date "without the necessity of passing a written examination," at $100 plus the 50% penalty §27-15-215 prescribes - $150 in total. Beyond twelve months, MID's position is that a resident is not eligible to reinstate and must complete pre-licensing education again and re-sit the exam. For a health producer that means another twenty hours. The Property & Casualty guide owns renewal in full.
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