New York Life Study Guide

New York’s life provisions look familiar at first glance — two-year contestability, three-year reinstatement, the classic three nonforfeiture options — and then, in three or four specific places, they quietly sit somewhere other than where your national outline put them. Those places are where the state-law points on this exam live. Learn the baseline, then learn exactly where New York bends it, and you own this part of the test.

The standard provisions — and the two numbers that aren’t standard

Section 3203 of the Insurance Law sets the required provisions for individual life policies. Most of them are what you would expect. Incontestability runs two years from the date of issue, during the insured’s lifetime — with the wrinkle that a benefit increase requiring evidence of insurability starts its own fresh two-year clock, so a policy can be simultaneously incontestable as to the base amount and contestable as to a rider added last year. Reinstatement is available for three years from the date of default, on written application with evidence of insurability, payment of overdue premiums with interest, and repayment of any indebtedness — unless the policy was surrendered for cash or an extended-term period has already run out. Interest on those overdue premiums is capped at 6% per year, compounded annually.

Now the part that costs candidates points. Ask most students the grace period on a New York life policy and they will say thirty days, because that is what the generic material teaches. New York says thirty-one days — a full calendar month — on a fixed-premium policy, and sixty-one days on a flexible-premium (universal life-type) contract.

Suicide — New York gives the money back

The suicide exclusion may not apply after the second anniversary of issue. That much is ordinary. What is not ordinary is what happens inside the two years: on an excluded suicide death, the insurer refunds the premiums paid. It does not simply deny the claim and keep the money.

Nonforfeiture, and the products you cannot sell on this licence

New York’s Standard Nonforfeiture Law requires the familiar three: cash surrender value, reduced paid-up insurance, and extended term insurance. Fixed and indexed annuities ride on the Life line without anything further.

Variable products do not. Variable life and variable annuities are securities, so placing one requires the New York Life line plus FINRA registration — a Series 6 or 7 with a Series 63. The exam likes the ordering: state licence first, variable authority alongside it, never variable on its own.

The secondary market — Article 78

New York regulates life settlements (viatical settlements) under Article 78, and both brokers and providers are licensed by DFS. The owner who sells a policy keeps a rescission right: until 15 days after receiving the settlement proceeds — and where the required written notice of that right was not given, until 30 days after that notice is eventually given. Read the second one carefully: the window does not quietly close at 30 days, it simply never starts until the notice is delivered.

Regulation 187 — the first state to go beyond annuities

Every state now has a best-interest standard for annuity recommendations. New York’s is different in one decisive way: Regulation 187 reaches life insurance too. It took effect for annuities on 1 August 2019 and for life insurance on 1 February 2020, and the Court of Appeals upheld it in 2022 — making New York the first state to hold an ordinary term-life recommendation to a best-interest duty rather than a suitability one.

One thing Regulation 187 does not do is set a training requirement on you. DFS has said plainly that the regulation does not require a specific course and is not a condition of maintaining your licence — the obligation to make sure a producer is adequately trained runs to the insurer. Any “Reg 187 requires N hours” claim describes somebody’s product, not the rule.