The South Dakota Accident and Health Producer License
South Dakota's name for this line is longer than most: Accident and Health or Sickness, as SDCL 58-30-152(2) writes it. The exam is InsSD_Health42, a standalone paper, and it is also reachable through the combined InsSD_LAH45 with Life for $95 rather than $170 for two singles.
The practical difference between this line and the Life line in South Dakota is not the syllabus - it is the delivery. Accident and Health can be taken from home. Pearson carries seven of South Dakota's nine insurance exams under OnVUE, this one among them as OPSD_Health42, at the same $85 and the same 120 minutes. The Life paper is the exception the handbook footnotes. That makes this the guide that owns South Dakota's `online-proctoring` module, below.
Everything else about getting here is short. No pre-licensing education for any South Dakota producer line. No fingerprinting and no background-check fee - the $50 charge on the Division's fee table is priced against Bail Bonds Producer and Bail Bond Runner only. No errors-and-omissions mandate. Pass, wait forty-eight hours for the result to reach SBS and NIPR, apply within 180 days for $25.
What the line then reaches is wider than group medical. South Dakota's health chapter carries individual accident and sickness policies, and its neighbours carry Medicare supplement (chapter 58-17A), long-term care (chapter 58-17B) and the state continuation regime (chapter 58-18C). Two of those three add a producer training gate or a rule that lives outside the statute, and both are covered in the most-tested section.
The South Dakota Accident and Health Exam: Two Delivery Modes, One Price
The handbook prints Accident and Health twice - once under "Test Center Exams" as InsSD_Health42 and once under "Online Exams (through OnVUE)" as OPSD_Health42. Both rows read 120 minutes, 90 questions, $85. The delivery mode changes nothing about the paper or the price.
| Test centre | Online (OnVUE) | |
|---|---|---|
| Series code | InsSD_Health42 | OPSD_Health42 |
| Questions | 90 | 90 |
| Time | 120 minutes | 120 minutes |
| Fee | $85 | $85 |
| Arrive / check in | At least 30 minutes early | Begin check-in 30 minutes before |
The content outlines split the paper differently - "50 scored plus 5 pretest questions" for General Knowledge and "25 scoreable questions plus 5 pretest questions" for the Accident & Health South Dakota Specific section, totalling 85 against the fee table's 90. Pearson's two documents disagree here as they do on five other South Dakota papers; the handbook is two and a half years the newer of the two and is what a booking screen quotes. Study the structure, book on the handbook's number.
Passing is a reported score of 70 and not a percentage. The handbook: "Examination scores range from 0 to 100, but should not be interpreted as the percentage or number of correct answers." A pass report carries no number at all - only a failing report "includes a numeric score and diagnostic information for the exam as well information about reexamination," and that diagnostic is scoped to the whole exam rather than to one section.
Booking runs on a 24-hour rhythm at both ends. Reserve at least twenty-four hours ahead - "Walk-in examinations are not available" - and cancel or reschedule at least twenty-four hours ahead to keep the fee. Fail, and you may rebook after twenty-four hours at the full $85 again. The handbook publishes no cap on attempts.
Most Tested Topics on the South Dakota Accident and Health Exam
The South Dakota section of this paper is twenty-five scored questions, and a disproportionate number of them turn on where a rule lives. Two of the state's most distinctive health rules - Medicare supplement availability under 65, and the whole external review machinery - sit in the administrative rules rather than the Codified Laws. A third, state continuation, sits in a standalone chapter that is not the small-employer chapter it looks like.
| Concept | The South Dakota rule | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Free look, accident and health | 10 days from DELIVERY; single premium nonrenewable policies excluded | SDCL 58-17-11 |
| Proof of loss, health claim | 90 days, with a one-year saving clause except in the absence of legal capacity | SDCL 58-17-24 |
| Clean claim, electronic | 30 calendar days - the statute says "calendar" on its own face | SDCL 58-12-20 |
| Clean claim, non-electronic | 45 calendar days, plus a 30-day request and a 30-day response | SDCL 58-12-20 |
| State continuation, duration | 12 months, with no employer-size threshold anywhere in the chapter | SDCL 58-18C-1 |
| State continuation, election | 30 days from due notice - but 60 days where the employer failed to pay or cancelled without notifying, and 90 days outside | SDCL 58-18C-5, 58-18C-1 |
| State continuation, premium | Not more than 125 percent of the group rate | SDCL 58-18C-8 |
| Medicare supplement, right of return | 30 days, refund paid to the applicant within 30 days of return | SDCL 58-17A-8 |
| Medicare supplement, under 65 | Open enrollment regardless of age, within 6 months of Part B enrollment | ARSD 20:06:13:84 |
| Long-term care, free look | 30 days from delivery | SDCL 58-17B-9 |
Start with state continuation, because the national instinct is wrong here. In most states, "state continuation" means a mini-COBRA for employers below the twenty-employee federal threshold. South Dakota's chapter 58-18C is not that. It carries no employee-count threshold at all - the triggers are narrower than they look. Ceasing operations - which 58-18C-1 defines as the business having "closed or discontinued its business operations" or, for a sole proprietorship or owner-operated business, a sale that leaves the purchaser with its own taxpayer identification number - - or the employer failing to submit premium payment, or cancelling the coverage and not notifying the employees of the loss. That last limb is conditional: a cancellation with proper notice does not trigger it. The employer must give notice of a nonpayment or cancellation "no later than ten days after the date of cancellation." Duration is twelve months, or "the remainder of the continuation term or twelve months, whichever is less" for someone already inside a continuation term. Eligibility requires six months of continuous prior coverage under 58-18C-3. Election runs on more than one clock, and answering it with a single number is the error. 58-18C-5 gives thirty days from receipt of due notice of termination. But 58-18C-1 gives sixty days from being notified of the loss of coverage where the employer failed to submit premium payment or cancelled the coverage without notifying employees - and caps the whole thing: "Whether notice is provided or not, the election period for continuation of coverage may expire ninety days from the date the group coverage terminated." Thirty, sixty, ninety, and the trigger decides which. And the premium ceiling is a hard number: "may not be greater than one hundred twenty-five percent of the group rate under which a person is covered." Do not read chapter 58-18B's small-group thresholds into any of it.
Then the two free looks, because South Dakota keeps them deliberately different. Accident and health is ten days from delivery at 58-17-11. Individual life is ten days from actual receipt at 58-15-8.1, and requires a written cancellation request. Long-term care and Medicare supplement are both thirty days. Four periods, three triggers, one chapter apart - and an exam question that hands you a postmark and a signature date is testing exactly this.
The prompt-pay answer is a two-part one. South Dakota does split by medium - thirty calendar days electronic against forty-five non-electronic - which is more than many states do. What it does not do is impose a portfolio test: there is no "ninety-five percent of clean claims within N days" standard, the duty is per claim, no interest rate is fixed, and SDCL 58-12-21 forecloses a private right of action. Enforcement runs through the unfair claims regime instead, and South Dakota has two of those in different chapters - which the Property and Casualty guide unpacks.
OnVUE Remote Proctoring for the South Dakota Accident and Health Exam
South Dakota supports remote proctoring, and it is confirmed three ways rather than assumed: Pearson's OnVUE programme inventory lists South Dakota Insurance; the state programme page carries an "OnVUE online testing information" link; and the candidate handbook prints a whole second fee table under the group heading "Online Exams (through OnVUE)" with seven OPSD series codes in it.
Seven of nine exams, and the two exclusions are worth naming. OnVUE carries Accident & Health (OPSD_Health42), the Life/Accident & Health combination (OPSD_LAH45), Property (OPSD_Prop43), Casualty (OPSD_Cas44), the Property & Casualty combination (OPSD_PropCas46), Personal Lines (OPSD_Pers53) and Crop (OPSD_Crop50). Life is excluded by footnote - "The SD Life Producer exam is only available in test centers" - and Bail Bonds simply has no online row. So a candidate taking Life and Health as two separate papers must go to a centre for one of them; a candidate taking the combination paper can do the whole thing at home.
The price is identical. $85 for a single line, $95 for a combination, whichever way you sit it. South Dakota does not charge a remote-delivery premium and does not discount it either.
What your equipment has to be. Pearson's South Dakota OnVUE page sets the floor: Windows 10 or macOS 14 or later; a working webcam, microphone and speaker, with headphones and headsets expressly not allowed; one display screen only - "multi-monitor setups are not permitted"; and a connection of at least 6 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload. Run the system test before booking, not on the morning.
What your room has to be. The desk must be "completely empty except for: The computer used for testing." You must be "alone at all times" - a spouse walking through the frame is a problem, not a footnote. And the session is recorded: "Your exam session is recorded for security, quality, and training purposes." The prohibited-items list from the test-centre rules applies in spirit at home, and it is expressly open-ended - "include but are not limited to" - so anything on the desk is a risk rather than a judgement call.
Check in thirty minutes early. Pearson's instruction is "Begin check-in 30 minutes before your appointment," which mirrors the test-centre rule that you "report to the test center at least 30 minutes before your exam begins to complete registration." Check-in involves photographing your identification and your room, and it takes real time - candidates who start at the appointment minute do not get the full window.
Your name has to match exactly. The OnVUE flow adds the requirement that the name on the identification exactly match the booking, and the handbook states the consequence in the test-centre context in terms that leave no room: "If the name on the exam registration does not exactly match the name on the IDs presented, you will not be allowed to test, and the exam fees will be forfeited." The state programme page repeats the warning in its own words, urging candidates to verify their legal name before testing because it carries through to the licensure documents.
And the fallback is not free. If your connection drops, your room fails inspection, or your machine will not run the check, you are inside the 24-hour cancellation window and the fee is yours - "You are individually liable for the full amount of the exam fee once a reservation has been made." The excused-absence route exists, but its six grounds are illness, a death in the immediate family, a disabling traffic accident, a court appearance or jury duty, military duty and a weather emergency. A router is not on the list.
South Dakota Accident and Health License Fees
$85 to Pearson VUE, $25 to the state, and nothing else the state charges. No pre-licensing course, no fingerprint appointment, no background-check fee, no errors-and-omissions filing - South Dakota requires none of the four.
The exam fee is the same whether you sit InsSD_Health42 in a centre or OPSD_Health42 at your desk. It is payable at reservation by credit card, debit card or voucher, and "Fees will not be accepted at the test center."
The licence fee is $25 resident, $30 non-resident, plus the portal's undisclosed transaction fee - NIPR says only that "Fees shown are state fees only." The same $25 covers every line of authority in one filing; South Dakota publishes no per-line charge.
Renewal is $20 biennially, or $40 late - the doubling the Division's FAQ describes for reinstatement within twelve months. Business entity renewal is free to the state, though the vendor may charge processing.
The cost that is easy to forget is the second attempt. A retake is the full $85 after a twenty-four-hour wait, with no discount and no published cap on tries. If Life is also in your plan, the arithmetic that actually saves money is the combination paper: $95 for InsSD_LAH45 against $170 for InsSD_Life41 and InsSD_Health42 taken separately - and the combination paper, unlike the standalone Life paper, is available under OnVUE.
South Dakota Accident and Health License Eligibility
Eighteen years of age, a passing score, the fee, and a clean answer to the background questions. Those are the four findings SDCL 58-30-148 requires the director to make before issuing a resident producer licence, and there is no fifth.
Residency is home-state residency, not time served. "A resident producer license is issued using your home state address," and home state means "your principal place of residency or your principal place of business." You may sit South Dakota papers anywhere in the country before you move - "in any Pearson test center nationwide."
NIPR adds two requirements the statute does not carry: a valid business email address, and, for applicants who are not United States citizens, proof of eligibility to work in the United States. Neither appears on the Division's own pages, which is a good reason to read the portal's requirements as well as the regulator's.
The disqualifiers are the thirteen numbered grounds at SDCL 58-30-167 - misleading application information, insurance-law violations, fraud, misappropriation, misrepresenting contract terms, a felony conviction, an unfair trade practice finding, dishonest or incompetent practice, an adverse licence action in another jurisdiction, forgery, using notes in a licensing examination, knowingly taking business from an unlicensed person, and failure to comply with a child-support order.
Two licence classes South Dakota does not issue at all, which is worth knowing if a colleague in another state holds one: property and casualty adjusters, and consultants. The Division's answer on consultants is a useful sentence for a health producer to have read: "South Dakota does not issue licenses to consultants; although if a person is acting in the capacity of a consultant and providing insurance advice, he or she may obtain a producer license."
South Dakota Accident and Health Continuing Education
Important CE details: Budget 10 approved credits per biennium, closing on the final day of whichever month you were born in. Anyone marketing long-term care owes a further block on top - an initial 8-credit qualification before the first sale and 4 more inside each 24-month renewal window - and it is the only training obligation in this state that repeats. Nothing banks forward into the following biennium. Producers whose home state is elsewhere owe South Dakota nothing here.
Ten credit hours of certified life and health courses every two years, due the last day of your birth month under SDCL 58-30-116. Hold Property and Casualty as well and the total is twenty, not thirty - the statute caps it with a proviso: "no more than twenty hours of continuing education may be required of any licensee holding multiple insurance producer licenses."
Long-term care is the gate that recurs. South Dakota publishes three product-specific training requirements, and this is the only one that comes back: eight hours before "selling, soliciting, or negotiating long-term care insurance," then four hours "within every twenty-four-month license renewal period." Annuity best interest is one-time; flood is one-time. Long-term care is ongoing, and a health producer is the licensee most likely to be caught by it.
Whether those training hours also count toward your ten is not stated for long-term care or for annuities. It is stated for flood, which the Division says "may be approved for three hours of continuing education credit" - which shows the Division answers this question when it means to. Budget the LTC hours as additional until you have a Division answer in writing.
The mechanics narrow how you may satisfy the ten. Carry-over is prohibited by ARSD 20:06:18:18 in one sentence, and ARSD 20:06:18:20 blocks repeating a course for credit inside the same two-year period. No ethics hours are required by either the statute or the rule. And the reporting duty is the provider's - rosters go to SBS "within fourteen (14) days of the conclusion of the course," so a course sat in your deadline week may still be outstanding on the Division's screen after the deadline passes.
Non-resident producers are exempt outright. The Division's non-resident page: "Non-resident producers are exempt from CE requirements in South Dakota. You only need to comply with CE requirements in your home state." Resident producers who let the deadline pass lose the licence and the appointments together - "all appointments will be terminated" - with reinstatement runs for one year - and the two portals label the money differently, NIPR pricing a $40 LATE RENEWAL against the $20 renewal and separately listing a $25 REINSTATEMENT fee for an insurance producer.
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