What This License Is
A New York Accident & Health license lets you sell accident, health, disability, Medicare supplement and long-term care products. It is issued by the Department of Financial Services (DFS), the agency that has covered insurance, banking and financial services under one Superintendent since 2011.
As with every New York line, you apply as an agent (representing the insurer) or a broker (representing the insured, under Insurance Law 2101(c)). The exam - Series 17-52 - is identical either way; the difference is who you legally act for, and whether you need a company appointment to go active.
One line worth drawing early: long-term care sits inside this license. New York does not bolt on a separate LTC credential, and - contrary to a widely repeated claim - it imposes no state LTC training requirement either. DFS has opined directly that New York insurance law does not require training or certification to be paid commissions on Partnership for Long Term Care products. Partnership-specific training exists, but it comes from the Department of Health and the participating insurers, not from DFS.
Exam Options & Format
The Accident & Health exam is Series 17-52 through PSI: 100 scored questions, five to ten unscored pretest items on top, a 2-hour limit, $40 an attempt.
70% correct passes - literally 70 of the 100 scored items. New York publishes no scaled score and no adjusted cut, and DFS prints the arithmetic in its own annual report, so you can plan against the raw number rather than guessing at a curve.
The combined Life, Accident & Health exam (Series 17-55) is the alternative: 150 questions, 2 hours 30 minutes, the same $40 fee, and both lines at once. The cost is upstream in coursework - 40 hours instead of 20.
There is no attempt limit and no mandatory waiting period if you fail. The only constraint is same-day rebooking: PSI needs the results processed first, so a Wednesday failure can be re-registered Thursday and retested as early as Friday, subject to seats. Each attempt is another $40.
Most Tested Topics on the New York Accident & Health Exam
New York layered so much on top of the federal floor that the state-law portion of this exam is unusually dense - and unusually winnable, because the rules are specific numbers rather than principles. These are verified against the Insurance Law and DFS:
| Concept | The New York rule |
|---|---|
| Marketplace structure | A state-based exchange - NY State of Health - which also enrols Medicaid, Child Health Plus and the Essential Plan. Not healthcare.gov |
| Clean-claim deadline, electronic | 30 days to pay a clean claim submitted electronically (Ins. Law 3224-a) |
| Clean-claim deadline, paper | 45 days for a clean claim on paper or any non-electronic route - New York is one of the states that splits the two |
| Late-payment interest | Interest accrues at the greater of the Commissioner of Taxation and Finance's corporate-tax rate or 12% a year - 12% is the floor, not a fixed rate |
| External appeal, binding effect | Binding on the plan AND on the insured (Ins. Law 4914) - it ends the dispute both ways. DFS administers it, a certified external appeal agent decides, the member files within 4 months of the final adverse determination, and the decision comes in 30 days - 72 hours expedited |
| Continuation, employer size | State continuation reaches groups under 20 employees (below the federal COBRA threshold) and extends federal COBRA for larger ones |
| Continuation, duration | Up to 36 months for all qualifying events at any employer size - New York tops the federal 18- and 29-month periods up to a full 36 |
| Continuation, election and cost | Elect within 60 days of the qualifying event or notice; premium capped at 102% of the group rate |
| CHIP program name | Child Health Plus, administered by the Department of Health |
| Medicaid expansion | Expanded to 138% FPL, effective 1 January 2014, run by the Department of Health |
The single most-missed item is the clean-claim split. Most states publish one prompt-pay deadline; New York publishes two, keyed to how the claim arrived. A question that names the submission method is not scene-setting - the method is the question, and 30 versus 45 is the whole answer.
The continuation numbers are the second trap, because they invert the federal pattern candidates arrive with. Generic prep teaches COBRA as 18 months, 29 with disability, 36 for certain dependent events, gated at 20+ employees. New York flattens all of it: 36 months, every qualifying event, every employer size. If a stem describes a New York group of eight employees and asks how long continuation runs, the federal answer is not on the list.
Finally, note what New York does not let insurers do. Rating here is pure community rating - Section 3231(a) requires premiums set "without regard to age, sex, health status, tobacco usage or occupation" on individual and small-group medical, which is a sharper rule than the ACA's own age bands and its permitted tobacco surcharge. It is the reason New York premiums look strange next to any other state's, and it shows up as a rating-factor question rather than a named-statute one.
Taking the Exam From Home
PSI proctors New York insurance exams remotely, and the option is live today - worth confirming out loud, because vendors have been quietly withdrawing remote testing in other states. You book it the same way you book a seat, then take it under a live proctor's supervision from your own room.
Run the system check first, not on exam morning. PSI publishes a browser-based check at `syscheck.bridge.psiexams.com` that exercises your webcam, microphone and network. A machine that fails it on the day is a forfeited fee, not a rescheduled appointment.
The launch window is tight, and the bulletin words it two ways. One passage says you can launch within 30 minutes of your booked time; another says that by not starting within 15 minutes of your booked time you forfeit the fee. Treat the 15 minutes as the real number and be at the machine early - there is no upside to testing which sentence a proctor is working from.
Room rules are stricter than a test centre's, in one specific way: there are no breaks at all. A test-centre candidate can go to the restroom with proctor approval (losing exam time but not the sitting). Remote candidates cannot. You also get no scratch paper - PSI provides and collects it at a centre, but at home there is nothing to write on. For a 100-question A&H exam with tiered continuation periods and two prompt-pay clocks to keep straight, that is a genuine consideration.
The rest is what you would expect: a valid government photo ID held up to the camera, adequate lighting, a webcam positioned so the proctor can see you and the room, no other person present, and no changing computers mid-exam. PSI staffs a dedicated remote-proctoring support line at (844) 267-1017 - worth having in your phone before you start, not after something goes wrong.
No Fingerprints - Which Makes the Background Questions Matter More
New York does not fingerprint agent or broker applicants. That is genuinely unusual, and it is the single biggest procedural difference between licensing here and licensing in a state like Arizona or Texas - there is no vendor to book, no service code to look up, no fee, and no two-week wait for a report to clear.
It is worth being precise about the exception list, because a half-remembered version of it circulates. DFS's fingerprinting page covers public and independent adjusters, professional bondsmen and charitable bail organisations, and - the one usually left out - life settlement brokers, intermediaries and providers, including their principals, executives and directors. If you later add a life settlement broker license on top of your producer license, you will be printed. The producer license itself, on either the agent or broker side, is not.
What replaces the fingerprints is the application's disclosure questions, and the swap changes the risk profile more than people expect. In a fingerprint state, an omission is discovered by the FBI check and then treated as a separate offence - misrepresentation on top of whatever was concealed. In New York there is no automatic discovery mechanism at the licensing stage. That sounds like less exposure. It is actually more, because a matter that surfaces later - in a consumer complaint, a carrier's own screening, or an appointment review - arrives with your signed application sitting next to it.
The one thing you cannot answer your way past is a federal disqualification. Under 18 U.S.C. 1033 and 1034, anyone convicted of a felony involving dishonesty or breach of trust is barred from the business of insurance unless a regulator grants written consent. DFS runs that process separately, through a Consent to Engage in the Business of Insurance application. If it applies to you, begin it before you file the license application, not after - it is a substantive review with documents, not a checkbox.
A practical note on documents: DFS routes supporting material through numbered submission codes on its Submission Requirements Chart rather than free-form uploads, so gather court dispositions, letters of explanation and any prior-state disciplinary records before you start the application rather than mid-form.
What It Costs
$40 to PSI for the exam and $80 to DFS for a two-year license: roughly $120 in unavoidable fees if you pass first time. Nothing for fingerprints, because there are none, and nothing per appointment - New York charges no appointment fee.
The variable is the 20-hour prelicensing course. Retakes run $40 with no attempt cap, and an exam fee paid but never used expires after one year, so register when you are ready to schedule rather than to lock in a price.
Eligibility Requirements
Minimum age 18, a completed 20-hour approved prelicensing course, and a passing Series 17-52 result within the two-year window. New York does not require citizenship, and it does not fingerprint you.
The substantive gate is the character review conducted through the application's disclosure questions - covered in detail in the section above, because with no fingerprint check behind it, what you write there is the review.
Keeping Your License Active
Important CE details: Fifteen credits per two-year period from DFS-approved providers, taken as classroom/seminar (NYCR) or self-study (NYCS). New York asks for one hour each of insurance law, ethics and professionalism, and diversity, inclusion and the elimination of bias inside that fifteen.
The license runs two years and expires on your birthday, in an even or odd year matching your birth year. The renewal window opens 180 days ahead of that date, and DFS's rule since April 2022 is fifteen credits a cycle.
Two features are worth knowing before your first renewal comes around. First, the requirement is not stacked per line: fifteen credits covers Accident & Health, and it would still be fifteen if you added Life and Personal Lines tomorrow. Only the mandated topics inside the fifteen change with the lines you hold - a property/casualty licensee picks up a flood-insurance hour, an A&H licensee does not. Second, your first term is exempt: CE applies once the license has been in effect more than two years.
Nonresidents are handled by reciprocity rather than duplication - if you are compliant in your home state, New York asks nothing further. The P&C guide covers renewal, relicensing and the lapse rules in full.
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