Rhode Island Life & Health Insurance Exam 2026

Life and Health Authority in Rhode Island

Rhode Island publishes no combined Life & Health examination. The Available Examinations table runs five producer papers - 01 Life, 02 Accident & Health, 03 Property, 04 Casualty and 55 Personal Lines - with no combined row of any kind. So life and health authority in Rhode Island is two lines of authority under R.I. Gen. Laws section 27-2.4-9(a)(1) and (a)(2), obtained through two examinations, and carried on one licence.

That structure costs less than it sounds, because of one line of small print. The Available Examinations fee column heading reads "Test Center Exam Fees* (If scheduled back to back, buy one get one free)," the asterisk resolves beneath the table to "* Candidates can register for two exams in one session (i.e. Property & Casualty)," and a separate note adds that "Candidates CAN take two major lines or two limited lines or one major and one limited line exam in one test session." Two papers, one session, $80. The licence fee does not change with the number of lines and the Department publishes no fee for adding one, so both lines cost exactly what one costs.

What you get for it is the broadest personal-insurance authority Rhode Island offers. Life covers life insurance and fixed annuities; Accident and Health covers accident, health and sickness coverage. Variable life and variable annuity products are a third line at section 27-2.4-9(a)(5), exam-waived because a FINRA CRD number does the qualifying instead - which means a producer with Life plus the variable line and a securities registration reaches everything on the personal side except property and casualty.

This guide owns two things the other Rhode Island guides point at: what happens on exam day, and who does not have to sit an exam at all. It also carries the life and health guaranty association material and the replacement rules, both of which cut across the two lines rather than belonging to either.

The Rhode Island Life and Health Route: Two Papers, One Session

Code 01 and code 02, two hours each, $80 for the pair. Each paper is built from two content outlines: a General Knowledge outline of "50 scoreable questions plus 5 pretest questions" and a Rhode Island Specific outline of "30 scoreable questions plus 5 pretest questions." So each paper is 80 scored and 10 pretest, 90 items, at about 80 seconds an item - and the route as a whole is 160 scored questions and 180 items.

The counts are sums of printed outline sections rather than published totals. Neither Pearson VUE document adds them up: the February 2026 candidate handbook carries exam codes, time allotments, fees and the Rhode Island content outlines themselves, counts and all, while the separate outlines publication #124001, stamped 05/2026 and effective 28 May 2026, carries the same counts and no time limits. Every pace on this site is computed on all items, scored and pretest together.

Whether to do it in one sitting is a stamina question, not a money question - the money is already decided. Four hours of testing plus check-in is a long morning, and the two papers do not share content: the general outlines are separate and the two Rhode Island outlines cover different chapters of the code. The argument for one session is the free second paper and one trip to East Providence. The argument against is that the second paper is sat tired, and a failed second paper costs $80 to retake, which is exactly what the footnote saved you.

A sensible compromise, if you want the discount and not the marathon: prepare both, book them back to back, and treat the second as the one you can afford to lose. Nothing about failing the second paper affects the first result, and you may apply for one line and add the other later at no fee.

One detail worth knowing before you book, and it is in the table's own grouping rows. The five producer papers sit under a heading reading "Major Lines - available in English or Spanish"; the adjuster and appraiser papers sit under "Limited Lines - English only." Codes 01 and 02 are therefore available in Spanish, and Pearson VUE separately publishes an English as a Second Language request form for candidates who need extra time rather than a translated paper.

Passing is a scaled 70 on each paper independently. "The scaled score that is reported to you is neither the number of questions you answered correctly nor the percentage of questions you answered correctly." A passing report carries the word pass and no number at all; the Personal Lines guide owns results and retakes in full.

Most Tested Topics Across the Rhode Island Life and Health Route

Sixty scored questions across the two papers are Rhode Island-specific. The material below is the part that spans both lines rather than sitting inside one: what happens when the insurer fails, what happens when a policy is replaced, and the education arithmetic that follows you for the rest of the licence.

The guaranty caps are where a well-prepared candidate loses marks, and the reason is the word "but." Section 27-34.3-3(c)(2)(i) gives $300,000 in death benefits "but not more than" $100,000 in net cash surrender and net cash withdrawal values. That is one cap with a sub-limit inside it, not two caps to be added. And the aggregate at (c)(2)(iv) then sits above the whole schedule: $300,000 with respect to any one life whatever mix of coverages produced it. The single exception raises the ceiling to $500,000 for "basic hospital, medical, and surgical insurance and major medical insurance" - major medical is inside the exception, which is easy to lose - and note that the wording shifts from "any one life" to "with respect to any one individual" when it does. Quote whichever limb you are relying on.

The replacement rules are the cleanest example in Rhode Island of a duty that belongs to somebody else. Every numbered clock in 230-RICR-20-25-4 belongs to an insurer: five business days for the replacing insurer to notify the existing insurer, five business days for the existing insurer to supply values, and the thirty-day unconditional refund the replacing insurer must offer. Every duty section 4.4 puts on the PRODUCER is timed by an event rather than by a calendar - the replacement notice goes out "not later than at the time of taking the" application. The one day count inside section 4.4 is not the producer's either: 4.4(B) makes the replacing insurer mail a paper copy "within five (5) business days after the application is submitted" where the notice was presented electronically. A question asking what the producer must do by when is testing whether you have merged the two sets.

And the guaranty association's advertising rule has two halves that pull in opposite directions. Section 27-34.3-19(a) forbids using the association's existence to sell anything - and note whom it binds, because the enumeration is illustrative rather than exhaustive: "No person, including an insurer, agent, producer, or affiliate of an insurer." Doing so is an unfair trade practice under chapter 27-29. Section 27-34.3-19(b) then requires that the association's approved summary document be delivered to the owner at the time the policy is delivered, the duty taking effect sixty days after the commissioner approves the document - and a separate subsection, (d), makes the member insurer "retain evidence of compliance with subsection (b) for so long as the policy or contract for which the notice is given remains in effect." Reporting only the prohibition is half the rule - Rhode Island bans the sales pitch and mandates the disclosure.

Rhode Island Exam Day: What to Bring and What to Expect

Arrive at least thirty minutes early. The handbook says it twice, in two sections, and the more careful of the two phrasings is the one to plan on: "Candidates should report to the test center at least thirty (30) minutes before the examination." The Exam Procedures section repeats it without the "at least." Thirty minutes is the floor, not the target - and if you are sitting two papers back to back, it is thirty minutes before the first one.

Bring TWO forms of identification. "Candidates must present two forms of current signature identification." One must be a primary ID bearing both a photograph and a signature and must be unexpired; the second must at minimum bear a signature.

Primary identification - any one of nine: a government-issued driver's licence; a U.S. Department of State driver's licence; a U.S. learner's permit, plastic card only, with photo and signature; a national, state or country identification card; a passport; a passport card; a military ID; a military ID for spouses and dependants; or an Alien Registration Card, meaning a Green Card or Permanent Resident Visa. Secondary identification - any one of three: a U.S. Social Security card, a debit or credit card, or any item from the primary list.

The two rules attached to that list are stricter than most people expect. "The name on the identification must exactly match the name on the registration" - so a recently married candidate registering under a new name needs identification in that name. And expiry is absolute: "Pearson VUE does not recognize grace periods. For example, if a candidate's driver's license expired yesterday and the state allows a 30-day grace period for renewing the ID, the ID is considered to be expired." The consequence is not a warning: candidates who do not present the required items "will be denied admission to the examination, will be considered absent, and will forfeit the examination fee."

Bring nothing else. "No personal items are allowed in the testing room. Personal items include but are not limited to: cellular phones, hand-held computers or other electronic devices, pagers, watches, wallets, purses, firearms or other weapons, hats, bags, coats, books, and/or notes, pens, or pencils." Separately: "Dictionaries, books, papers (including scratch paper), and reference materials are not permitted in the examination room (unless permitted by the exam sponsor)." Note the carve-out at the end of that sentence - it is the route by which any Rhode Island-specific allowance would exist, and the handbook publishes none. Note too that watches are on the personal-items list, so the clock you work to is the one on the screen.

You do not bring writing materials either, because the centre supplies them. The handbook's own description is that "the test administrator will provide the candidate with materials to make notes or calculations and any other items specified by the exam sponsor." That is the operative rule: nothing in, materials provided. The handbook carries no separate sentence about calculators in either direction, so treat the on-screen tools and the supplied materials as what you have, and do not plan around bringing your own.

Check-in, in the order it happens. Your identification and other documentation are reviewed; you are photographed for the score report; you review and sign a Candidate Rules Agreement; and you are offered a tutorial on the computer you will use. The tutorial is free in the only sense that matters - "The time spent on this tutorial will not reduce the examination time." Take it, particularly on a first sitting.

Then the clock. "The examination begins the moment a candidate looks at the first examination question." It ends by itself: "The examination will end automatically when the examination time has expired, and candidates will leave the test center with their official scores in hand." On breaks the handbook offers only generic language - most sponsors allow unscheduled breaks, with the exam clock continuing to run - and does not state affirmatively that Rhode Island insurance candidates may take one. Plan the sitting as continuous, and ask the administrator at check-in if it matters to you.

Late, or absent, and the fee is normally gone - but there is a way back. "Candidates absent from or late to an exam who have not changed or canceled the reservation according to the Change/Cancel Policy will not be admitted to the exam and will forfeit the exam fee." There is no grace window at the door. The handbook's Absence/Lateness Policy does, however, publish a route: "Candidates who are late or absent from an exam may call Pearson VUE within 14 days of the exam date to request an excused absence for the following reasons: Illness of the candidate or of the candidate's immediate family member; Death in their immediate family; Disabling traffic accident; Court appearance or jury duty; Military duty; Weather emergency." Fourteen days, six grounds - call rather than write the $80 off. The Property guide owns test centres, booking and the forty-eight hour change rule.

Weather is the one thing they will move for. "If severe weather or a natural disaster makes the test center inaccessible or unsafe, the examination may be delayed or canceled. Pearson VUE will notify and reschedule candidates in the case of severe weather." That is a real consideration for a February sitting in southern New England.

Who Does Not Have to Sit a Rhode Island Exam

Start with what Rhode Island does not have, because it is the thing people come looking for. There is no designation-based examination waiver in Rhode Island. No CLU, CPCU, ChFC, CFP, CIC, FLMI or LUTCF list appears in the Pearson VUE candidate handbook, in DBR's licensing FAQ, on DBR's Insurance Professionals page, or on either NIPR Rhode Island page. Holding a professional designation does not excuse you from exam code 01 or code 02.

And there is no coursework exemption list either, for a structural reason rather than an accidental one. A coursework exemption excuses you from pre-licensing education. Rhode Island mandates no pre-licensing education for any producer line - chapters 27-3.1 and 27-3.3 are both repealed and section 27-2.4-7 imposes no course of study - so there is nothing for an exemption to operate on. That is a cleaner answer than an absence: the list does not exist because the requirement does not.

What Rhode Island grants instead is relief based on prior licensure, at section 27-2.4-11, and both limbs carry conditions.

Limb one - previously licensed elsewhere for the same lines. Section 27-2.4-11(a) excuses both pre-licensing education and the examination for an applicant who was licensed for the same lines of authority in another state. The conditions are cumulative: the applicant must be currently licensed there, or the application must be received within 90 days of cancellation of the prior licence; and the prior state must certify that the applicant is in good standing, or the NAIC's Producer Database must show it. And the relief is not total - the applicant "shall be required to certify knowledge of Rhode Island law applicable to insurance producers." The state part of the syllabus does not go away; only the sitting does.

Limb two - moving to Rhode Island. Section 27-2.4-11(b) covers a licensed producer who moves here, and attaches its own ninety-day clock: the application must be made within 90 days of establishing legal residence. No pre-licensing or examination is required for any line previously held - "except where the insurance commissioner determines otherwise by regulation." Read the two limbs as separate clocks measuring separate events: one runs from the cancellation of the old licence, the other from establishing residence here.

How DBR actually administers the move, which is more useful than either statute on its own. Its licensing FAQ splits the case in two. If you already hold a Rhode Island non-resident licence and then move here, there is no new application at all: "We will convert a non-resident license to a resident license with an emailed request including your new Rhode Island resident address," and "The expiration date on your Rhode Island license will not change." If you hold no Rhode Island licence, you first request cancellation of your former resident-state licence, then - "At least 24 hours after that license is cancelled (but not more than 90 days)" - apply at NIPR, and "Our electronic business rules will pick up on a cancelled resident license for 90 days after it is cancelled and you will be allowed to move forward and complete a new resident license application without having to take the Rhode Island licensing exam."

That is a hard window with a floor as well as a ceiling. Twenty-four hours after cancellation at the earliest, ninety days at the latest. Apply too soon and the business rules have not caught up; apply too late and you sit the Rhode Island papers. NIPR states a related rule from the licence's own side: an applicant is exempt from the licence exam where the inactive status of a previous resident licence is within 90 days of the application, or where the Rhode Island resident licence and the line applied for have been inactive within the past year.

A third waiver, and it is not about prior licensure at all. Section 27-2.4-9(d) lets the Commissioner waive any of the renewal procedures - and expressly "any examination requirement," fine or sanction - for a licensee unable to comply because of military service, or some other extenuating circumstance such as a long-term medical disability. It is available on request, and it is discretionary rather than automatic. Ask; do not assume.

Finally, some Rhode Island lines have no examination to be waived from. Variable life and variable annuity products, car rental, credit, crop, travel, pet, life settlement broker, other limited line and other limited line surety are all exam-waived on NIPR's Rhode Island resident page - and the Available Examinations table confirms why: it carries no consultant row at all, and its four rows grouped under "Limited Lines - English only" are the adjuster and appraiser papers - 14, 17, 18 and 38 - not the credit, crop, travel or pet lines. Nothing in Rhode Island's limited-line producer set has a paper to sit. The variable line does have a substitute qualification, a FINRA CRD number, which NIPR requires on the application. So in Rhode Island exam relief comes from prior licensure, from the Commissioner's discretion, or from the line itself - and never from a credential you hold.

Rhode Island Life and Health Fees

$80 for both papers if they are scheduled back to back, $5 for the BCI report, $120 to the state. About $205 for two lines of authority - the same total a candidate pays for one.

The only way to get this wrong is to book the papers on different days, which turns $80 into $160 and buys nothing. The rule is printed inside the fee column heading of the February 2026 handbook's Available Examinations table, which is why it is so easy to miss: "Test Center Exam Fees* (If scheduled back to back, buy one get one free)."

The licence fee does not scale with lines. 230-RICR-20-50-5 prices a resident producer licence at $120 - $55 a year under section 27-2.4-4 plus a $5 a year continuing-education tracking fee, doubled for the two-year term - and its schedule contains no fee for adding a line of authority. Both lines sit on the one licence for the one fee, and a producer who adds Property and Casualty later pays only for those examinations.

Two costs the fee schedule never mentions and both reach this route. Errors and omissions insurance is required of every resident producer licensee at $250,000 per claim and $500,000 in the annual aggregate, under section 27-2.4-23, and is bought from the market rather than the state. And the annuity best-interest course - four credits, once - is a prerequisite for soliciting an annuity under 230-RICR-20-25-1 section 1.7. Bulletin 2021-1's one-credit bridge for producers who already held the older annuity training was a transition measure and expired on 30 September 2021. If long-term care is in the plan, add the eight-hour course, with four hours every twenty-four months after that.

Later: $120 to renew every two years, still $120 inside the thirty-day post-expiry grace period, $170 to reinstate from day 31 to day 365. The Property and Casualty guide owns those tiers.

Rhode Island Life and Health Eligibility

Four findings, at section 27-2.4-8(a): at least eighteen; no act committed that is a ground for denial, suspension or revocation under section 27-2.4-14; the section 27-2.4-4 fees paid; and the examinations passed for the lines applied for - two examinations, on this route, unless section 27-2.4-11 relieves you of them.

Nothing else is in the section. There is no good-character finding, no competence finding, no financial-responsibility finding and no criminal-background requirement in section 27-2.4-8 itself. Character reaches licensure only through the cross-reference in paragraph (2) to the fourteen grounds at section 27-2.4-14(a) - the Accident and Health guide owns the background-disclosure module and works through what that means in practice.

The examination requirement is statutory, and so is what it must cover. Section 27-2.4-7(a): a resident individual applicant "shall pass a written examination unless exempt pursuant to section 27-2.4-11," and the examination must test the lines of authority applied for, the duties and responsibilities of a producer, and the insurance laws and regulations of Rhode Island. Section 27-2.4-7(d) then requires anyone who fails to appear or fails to pass to reapply and re-remit all fees before scheduling again.

Business entity licensure is elective in Rhode Island, which is unusual enough to note. Section 27-2.4-8(b) says an entity "may elect to obtain" a producer licence, and the Commissioner makes only two findings: fees paid, and a designated licensed producer responsible for the entity's compliance with Rhode Island insurance law. NIPR requires that designated responsible licensed producer to hold an active Rhode Island resident or non-resident licence.

And one duty that falls on insurers rather than on you, worth knowing because it is routinely misremembered as a producer obligation: section 27-2.4-8(d) requires each insurer selling limited line credit insurance to provide a programme of instruction to each individual whose duties include selling it. The duty runs from the insurer to the individual.

Rhode Island Life and Health Continuing Education

Twenty-four credits per biennial licence period, three of them ethics - 230-RICR-20-50-2 section 2.6(A). Holding two lines does not double it; the requirement belongs to the licence.

Read the operator on the requirement before you plan to the number. Section 2.6(A) sets "a minimum of twenty-four (24) accumulated credit hours" - a floor rather than a target, which matters because the surplus above it is what carryover works on. Twenty-four exactly leaves nothing to carry forward and nothing in hand if a course turns out not to have been approved.

Exemptions, all five of them. Section 2.5 of the CE rule exempts holders of licences for insurance types requiring no examination; residents whose licences are limited to credit, crop, travel, surety, car rental or title insurance; non-residents who meet their home state's requirement where that state is reciprocal; residents licensed continuously for twenty-five or more years who are at least fifty-five at renewal; and anyone the Department exempts. The long-service exemption needs both halves - twenty-five years and age fifty-five at renewal.

Reporting belongs to the provider, and its deadline is the one that matters to you. Section 2.8(A)(5): providers submit rosters electronically "within ten (10) days of completion of the course." NIPR adds that the state's compliance status can take up to seventy-two hours to reach its system. So a course finished the week of your renewal may still not be visible when you try to renew - finish a fortnight early and check the transcript rather than the certificate.

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