What This License Is
Holding Life plus Accident and Health or Sickness authority is the standard combination for a producer selling individual coverage — life, annuities, disability and health. Both lines sit on one producer license issued by NCDOI.
Getting there takes two exams. North Carolina offers no combined Life & Accident and Health sitting. You sit the Life Agent exam and the Accident & Health or Sickness exam separately, at $45 each, and they can be weeks apart. There is no discount for taking them together and no penalty for spacing them out.
One planning note specific to North Carolina's inverted sequence: because the NIPR application comes first and carries a six-month eligibility window, both exams have to be passed and the license issued inside that same window if you apply for both lines at once. If you would rather take them a year apart, apply for one line now and add the second later as a separate transaction.
Exam Options & Format
Both exams share a shape: 55 scored questions plus 5 unscored pretest items, 1 hour 15 minutes, $45. Two sittings, 110 scored questions in total, $90 in exam fees.
The five major producer exams here are two-part — a general-knowledge section and a North Carolina section — and the handbook is clear about what that means: "the two parts are scored together, not individually." You get one overall score. There is no separate pass mark per part, no partial credit, and no carrying a passed part into a retake.
The passing standard is a scaled score of 70 on a 0-100 scale — which is not the same thing as 70% correct. The handbook is explicit: the reported score "is neither the number of questions you answered correctly nor the percentage of questions you answered correctly." Raw answers are converted onto a common scale so a marginally harder form is not a harder pass.
Pre-licensing education is no longer required. Session Law 2025-45 amended G.S. 58-33-30(d)(1) effective October 1, 2025 so that "the Commissioner shall not require an individual who applies for an insurance producer license in this State to complete any specific amount of instruction or any specific course of instruction." The old 20 hours per line is gone. Courses still exist and are still worth taking — but they are optional, and any site telling you to buy 20 hours before you may sit the exam is describing the law as it stood before last October. NCDOI's own legacy prelicensing page is among them.
The two state sections barely overlap, which is the argument against studying them as one block. Life draws on G.S. 58-58-22's required provisions and the Title 11 free-look and annuity rules; health draws on G.S. 58-51-15's policy provisions, Article 53 continuation and the Article 54 Medicare supplement rules. Prepare them as two bodies of material, because that is what they are.
Most Tested Topics Across the North Carolina Life & Health Exams
Some North Carolina rules span both exams — the guaranty association standing behind life and health policies, and the free-look periods that attach by product type rather than by line. Those are collected here; the line-specific material lives in the Life and the Accident & Health guides.
| Concept | The North Carolina rule |
|---|---|
| Guaranty association | The North Carolina Life and Health Insurance Guaranty Association, Article 62 — a separate statute from the P&C Insurance Guaranty Association, with entirely different limits |
| Life cap | $300,000 for all benefits including cash values (G.S. 58-62-21(d)) |
| 🚩 No death-benefit / cash-value split | North Carolina does not use the familiar NAIC pattern of $300,000 death benefit plus $100,000 net cash surrender value. It is one combined $300,000 figure |
| Annuity cap | Within the same $300,000 aggregate per individual life |
| Structured settlement annuity | $1,000,000, including cash values |
| Unallocated annuity contracts | $5,000,000 in benefits |
| Health benefit plans | $500,000 |
| Other health coverage | $300,000 |
| Aggregate per life | $300,000, rising to $500,000 where health benefit plan benefits are involved |
| Notable exclusions | Medicare Parts C and D, Medicaid, self-funded or uninsured employee plans, reinsurance without assumption certificates, extra-contractual and penalty claims (§ 58-62-21(c)) |
| Sales inducement | Using the existence of the association to advertise or induce the purchase of insurance is prohibited (§ 58-62-86) |
| Free look, life and annuity | 10 days, with a "Ten Day Free Look" provision displayed on the policy face by sticker or printing before issuance or delivery (11 NCAC 12 .0447) |
| Free look, annuity where disclosure was late | No less than 15 days where the buyer's guide and disclosure document were not delivered at or before application — and it runs concurrently with the 10-day rule rather than adding to it (G.S. 58-60-135(c)) |
| Free look, long-term care | 30 days from delivery |
| Free look, Medicare supplement | 30 days from delivery (§ 58-54-30) |
The guaranty structure is where a well-prepared candidate loses points. National material teaches the NAIC model's split — $300,000 for the death benefit, a separate $100,000 for net cash surrender value. North Carolina states a single $300,000 covering all benefits including cash values. If an answer choice offers you $100,000 for cash value, it is testing exactly this.
The free looks reward learning as a set rather than one at a time: 10 days is the general rule for life and annuity, 15 is the penalty version that applies when the annuity buyer's guide arrived late, and 30 covers both long-term care and Medicare supplement. Four situations, three numbers — 10 / 15 / 30.
Exam Day at a Pearson VUE Center — What Actually Happens
You will do this twice, so it is worth getting right the first time. North Carolina insurance exams are delivered in person only. The handbook makes no provision for OnVUE or any remote-proctored option, and it states plainly that walk-in examinations are not available — every seat is booked in advance.
Bring two forms of ID. This is the detail that turns candidates away, and it runs opposite to several other states. The handbook: "Candidates must present two (2) forms of current signature identification. The name on the identification must exactly match the name on the registration." The primary ID must be government-issued, unexpired, and carry both a photograph and a signature — a driver's license, passport or military ID. The secondary ID need only bear a valid signature, so a debit or credit card does the job.
The name has to match exactly. Not approximately, and not a nickname. A registration reading "Bill" against a licence reading "William" is a turn-away and the $45 goes with it. Check this when you register, because it cannot be fixed on exam morning.
Arrive 30 minutes early. The handbook asks candidates to report to the test center at least thirty minutes before the examination begins. That window covers ID checks, the digital signature and the locker routine — it is not padding, and arriving at your appointment time means arriving late.
Rescheduling. To change or cancel without losing the fee you must act at least 48 hours before the appointment. Inside 48 hours the $45 is forfeited. If something genuinely unavoidable happens, there is a second route: an excused-absence request within 14 days, available for illness, a death in the family, a traffic accident, court duty, military duty or a weather emergency.
Security. Everything goes in a locker — phone, watch, bag, notes. No reference material of any kind is permitted, and a revoked exam for misconduct is not retakeable.
The clock and the two parts. The time allotted covers both parts of a two-part exam, and the two parts are scored together. Budget accordingly: on a 75-minute Life or A&H exam you are answering 60 questions including the pretest items, which is comfortable but not leisurely. Answer everything — there is no penalty for guessing.
Afterwards. Your result is issued at the test center. Failing candidates receive a diagnostic report keyed to the content-outline areas, which is the single most useful document you will get. The Personal Lines guide covers how scoring works and how to use that report before rebooking.
What It Costs
Two exams at $45 is $90, plus the NIPR application: $82 initial resident (including the $38 criminal record check) and $50 per line of authority — $100 for the two. Roughly $270 all in on first-attempt passes, plus NIPR's transaction fee and the local fingerprinting charge.
The number that used to dominate this budget is gone. Before October 1, 2025 a producer wanting both lines needed 40 hours of prelicensing coursework — 20 per line — which typically cost more than everything else combined. Session Law 2025-45 repealed it. A retake is $45 for that exam only; a failure on one exam does not touch a passed score on the other.
Eligibility Requirements
You must be at least 18 years old and, for a resident license, live in North Carolina. There is no education requirement of any kind — the prelicensing coursework that used to gate the exam was repealed on October 1, 2025 — so the exam and the background check are the whole test.
The background side is real, though. G.S. 58-33-48 requires every resident producer applicant to give the Commissioner a complete set of fingerprints for a state and federal criminal record check, and the NIPR application carries the usual uniform disclosure questions on criminal history, administrative actions and unsatisfied judgments. A criminal history is not an automatic bar, but crimes involving fraud, dishonesty or breach of trust weigh heavily. Because both lines sit on one license, one application and one set of fingerprints covers both — but remember that both exams must be passed inside the same six-month application window.
Keeping Your License Active
Important CE details: North Carolina producer licenses do not renew — they are perpetual. What keeps one alive is CE: 24 credit hours per two-year compliance cycle, including 3 hours of ethics, due by the last day of your birth month in odd or even years matching your birth year. CE is administered by Prometric, not by Pearson VUE. Holding both Life and Accident & Health does not increase the requirement — 24 hours is the statutory ceiling regardless of how many lines you hold.
Here is the good news in the two-exam structure: CE does not double. Holding Life and Accident & Health authority requires the same 24 credit hours per two-year compliance cycle as a single line, including 3 hours of ethics. Twenty-four is the statutory ceiling under G.S. 58-33-130 regardless of how many lines you hold.
And there is nothing to renew. North Carolina producer licenses are perpetual — they "do not renew and are valid until surrendered, canceled or revoked." The compliance date, not a renewal date, is what you diary: the last day of your birth month, in years matching your birth-year parity.
CE is administered by Prometric through Compliance Express, which is a different vendor from the one that gave you the exams. The Property & Casualty guide walks through the full compliance cycle, the four-month makeup window and the $75 fees.
Quick Reference
Official Links
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