What the Tennessee Accident & Health License Is
The Accident and Health line authorises you to sell health, disability income, Medicare supplement, long-term care and the rest of the accident-and-sickness family in Tennessee. It is a standalone line with its own examination - T.C.A. 56-6-103 lists it separately from Life - and the Department that issues it is the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance.
No pre-licensing course applies. Tennessee reserves that requirement for title insurance alone, at 30 statutory hours under T.C.A. 56-6-106. For Accident & Health you may schedule the exam the day you decide to sit it.
The market you are licensing into has a particular shape. Tennessee did not build a state exchange - individual coverage runs through the federally facilitated marketplace at HealthCare.gov. It also did not expand Medicaid under the ACA; the program is TennCare, administered by the Division of TennCare, with CoverKids as the state's CHIP. That combination produces a real coverage gap for adults above TennCare eligibility and below the subsidy floor, and it is the sort of structural fact the Tennessee-Specific section of the exam likes.
Long-term care deserves a note before you get there. Selling it in Tennessee requires LTC-specific training under T.C.A. 56-42-109 - an obligation that sits entirely outside the 24 hours of continuing education and is not satisfied by them.
Exam Options & Format
The Accident & Health examination is 68 scored questions in 1 hour 45 minutes at $55, assembled from 50 General Knowledge items and 18 Tennessee-Specific items sat in one appointment, with 9 unscored pretest questions mixed in. Seventy-seven items appear on screen; 68 count.
Scoring is scaled. The handbook says the reported figure "is neither the number of questions answered correctly (the raw score) nor the percentage of questions answered correctly", that raw scores are placed on a 0-to-100 scale, and that the Department "has selected 70 as the passing score for reporting purposes." Tennessee is not a 70-percent state, whatever a prep provider's marketing says.
Where Tennessee is unusual is the combined exam - and this is the part the repo previously had wrong. At a physical test center Tennessee sells one line at a time and nothing else; the handbook's test-center table lists individual exams only. The combined sittings exist solely through OnVUE: Life and Accident & Health for $80, and Life, Accident & Health and Title for $125. If you want both L&H lines in one appointment, the online channel is not a preference. It is the only route.
That saves $30 against two $55 exams, and one appointment. It also spends one of your two OnVUE attempts for the line - the handbook is explicit: "you are limited to 2 OnVUE attempts per exam line. Any additional attempts will need to be taken in a testing center."
Most Tested Topics on the Tennessee Accident & Health Exam
Tennessee's health law diverges from the national baseline in a small number of specific, numerical places. These are them:
| Concept | The Tennessee rule |
|---|---|
| Clean claim deadline, electronic submission | 21 calendar days from receipt to pay or act on a clean claim filed electronically (T.C.A. 56-7-109) |
| Clean claim deadline, paper submission | 30 calendar days - Tennessee is one of the states that splits the deadline by submission medium (T.C.A. 56-7-109) |
| Interest on a late clean claim | 1% interest per month, accruing from the day after the payment was due (T.C.A. 56-7-109) |
| State continuation, standard duration | The fractional policy month remaining at termination, plus 3 additional policy months - not 18 months, and not counted in the COBRA way (T.C.A. 56-7-2312) |
| State continuation, divorce or death of a spouse | The fractional policy month remaining plus up to 15 additional policy months - a materially longer entitlement triggered by those two events |
| State continuation, termination during pregnancy | A third branch most summaries omit: the fractional month remaining plus not less than 6 months after the pregnancy ends, and not more than the end of the second three-month period following the three-month period in which it ends (T.C.A. 56-7-2312(d)(1)) |
| State continuation, prior-coverage condition | The person must have been continuously insured for at least 3 months before termination, and must pay the premium in advance |
| State continuation, the principal exclusion | No continuation where the group policy was terminated in its entirety, or terminated with respect to an insured class of which the employee was a member - conversion rights only |
| State continuation, other exclusions | Those who failed to pay contributions, those eligible for Medicare, and those whose coverage was replaced within 31 days |
| Employer-size trigger for state continuation | None - Tennessee's continuation right attaches to the group policy regardless of headcount, while federal COBRA starts at 20 employees |
| External review outcome | The independent review organisation's decision is binding on the health carrier under the Tennessee Health Carrier Grievance and External Review Procedure Act |
| Medicaid posture | Non-expansion. The program is TennCare; CHIP is CoverKids |
| Marketplace type | Federally facilitated - Tennessee built no state-based exchange |
| Long-term care training | A one-time eight-hour course before you sell LTC (T.C.A. 56-42-109(a)(1)), plus ongoing training every 24 months by rule, with a 30-day free look on the policy itself (56-42-105(f)(1)) |
| Free look, individual accident and health | 10 days to return the policy - and note this is a health provision (T.C.A. 56-26-129); Tennessee fixes no equivalent general free look for a new individual life policy or annuity |
The continuation statute is the question most candidates get wrong, and they get it wrong by importing a number. Tennessee does not give you 18 months, and it does not scale the entitlement to the size of the employer. T.C.A. 56-7-2312 gives the terminated employee "the fractional policy month remaining at termination, plus three (3) additional policy months" - a period measured in policy months from the date coverage ended, which is a genuinely different unit from the one COBRA uses. Then it opens two wider doors. Where coverage ends because of divorce or the death of the spouse, the entitlement becomes the fractional month plus up to fifteen additional policy months. And where coverage terminates during pregnancy, it becomes the fractional month plus "not less than six (6) months after the pregnancy ends." Three branches, three triggers - and a stem that troubles to tell you why the coverage ended is telling you which branch applies.
The prompt-pay split is the second reliable point. Plenty of states set one clean-claim deadline. Tennessee sets two and keys them to how the claim arrived: 21 days electronic, 30 days paper, with 1% a month running from the day after the due date. Candidates who memorised a single figure will pick it confidently and be wrong half the time.
One exclusion is worth stating on its own, because it is the one that decides most real cases: there is no continuation right where the group policy was terminated in its entirety, or terminated with respect to an insured class of which the employee was a member. Continuation carries an individual out of a group that still exists; when the group itself goes, what remains is a conversion right, not a continuation right.
And the marketplace facts are worth holding as a set, because Tennessee's answers cluster: no state exchange, no Medicaid expansion, TennCare as the Medicaid program, CoverKids as CHIP. Get one and you can usually reason to the rest.
Taking Your Tennessee Exam Online with OnVUE
Tennessee offers four of its producer examinations through OnVUE, Pearson VUE's remote-proctored delivery, at the same $55 it charges in a test center: Life, Accident & Health, Property and Casualty. It also offers all four combined sittings there and nowhere else. What OnVUE does not cover is Personal Lines, Title on its own and Public Adjuster - the handbook's fee table lists those in the test-center column only. Because the combined sittings exist online alone, OnVUE is doing more work in Tennessee than in most states: for anyone taking two lines it is a licensing route, not just a convenience.
Run the system test first, on the machine and network you will actually use. Pearson VUE's instruction is precise about that: run and pass the system test "on the same device and network" as the exam. The published minimums are Windows 10 or later, or macOS 14 or later, a stable connection of at least 6 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload, a working webcam, microphone and speaker, and a single display. A second monitor will stop you at check-in even if it is switched off.
Begin check-in 30 minutes before your appointment - the same lead time the test centers ask for, but spent differently. You will photograph yourself, photograph your identification, and complete a 360-degree scan of the room using your phone, after which the phone goes out of reach. A greeter reviews the images before a proctor releases the exam.
Identification is government-issued, photo-bearing, and the name must match the booking exactly. Pearson VUE's accepted list for online delivery includes an international passport, a plastic driver's license, and a national, state, provincial or EU identity card. A paper temporary license or a photocopy will not pass. Note that this differs from what a Tennessee test center asks for - the handbook requires two forms of current signature identification in person. Online you present one, but it is checked harder.
The desk must be empty. Pearson VUE's rule is that the workspace is "completely empty except for" the computer, any pre-approved comfort aid, and a beverage in an unmarked container. No books, no notes, no phone within reach, no food, no watch, no second screen. Nobody else may enter the room for the duration, and you must remain in webcam view throughout.
There are no breaks, and Tennessee's handbook says so in terms that matter: "There are no unscheduled breaks in the exam therefore be prepared to commit your full time." Leaving the camera's view can end the session and revoke the result. For the single-line exams that is 1 hour 45 minutes of continuous commitment - and for a combined Life and Accident & Health sitting it will be longer, though the handbook publishes no figure for it.
Two attempts, then you go in person. The handbook caps OnVUE at "2 OnVUE attempts per exam line. Any additional attempts will need to be taken in a testing center." Combine that with Tennessee's retake ladder - 10 days after a first failure, 30 days after each one after that - and the practical position is this: if you fail twice online, your third attempt is a drive to Brentwood, Chattanooga, Hartsville, Jackson, Johnson City, Knoxville, Livingston, Martin, Memphis or Nashville, thirty days later. The Property guide covers the test centers.
Book realistically. Rescheduling or cancelling requires at least 48 hours notice; inside that window, or if you are simply late, the $55 is forfeit. Remote testing removes the drive, not the deadline.
What the Accident & Health License Costs
$55 for the exam and $50 for the NIPR application: about $105 in published fees, plus the IdentoGO fingerprint charge, which TDCI does not publish and which is quoted to you inside the IdentoGO booking flow.
The combined sitting changes the maths if you want both L&H lines. Life and Accident & Health together through OnVUE is $80. The same two lines bought separately are $110. Adding Title to the combination takes it to $125 - though Title carries a 30-hour statutory pre-licensing course under T.C.A. 56-6-106, so that is a bigger decision than the $45 price difference suggests.
There is no course fee for this line. Tennessee requires no pre-licensing education for Accident & Health, which removes the largest line item that mandatory-education states impose.
Retakes are $55 apiece. Fees are nonrefundable and nontransferable, and a reschedule inside 48 hours forfeits them. Renewal, two years on, is $60.
Eligibility Requirements
Be at least 18 years old, pass the examination for every line you want, and satisfy the Commissioner as to your character and trustworthiness. T.C.A. 56-6-106 lists what the application must show; 56-6-107 says that an applicant who has met 56-6-105 and 56-6-106 "shall be issued an insurance producer license" unless licensure is denied under 56-6-112.
Tennessee grants no designation waivers. CLU, ChFC, CPCU, CIC and the rest buy you nothing here. T.C.A. 56-6-109 is the state's exemption-from-examination section, and the only exemption in it is for an individual previously licensed for the same lines of authority in another state - no credential is named. The other no-exam routes are the temporary license at 56-6-111 and limited-lines authority.
Fingerprints are part of the initial application for every resident producer, and they must be on file before you file at NIPR - not after. The Casualty guide walks the IdentoGO process, the universal ORI codes and the two-business-day lead time step by step.
One health-specific obligation sits outside the licensing statute. Long-term care may not be sold until you complete LTC training under T.C.A. 56-42-109 - a product gate, not an entry gate, and one that no amount of general continuing education discharges.
Keeping the License Active
Important CE details: Budget a dozen credits a year and the biennial total looks after itself. Three of those credits must be ethics, and no amount of banking spares you from redoing them.
Twenty-four credit hours per two-year term, three of them ethics. The term itself is 24 months measured from the last day of your birth month (T.C.A. 56-6-107), and TDCI approves both the courses and the providers - an approved course may be repeated for credit only after two years.
Because Tennessee counts the producer rather than the lines, a health-only licensee and a four-line licensee owe the same 24 hours. The practical consequence is that broadening your authority is cheap in CE terms and expensive only at the exam.
Long-term care training is the health producer's separate obligation, and it recurs. T.C.A. 56-42-109(a)(1) conditions LTC sales on a one-time eight-hour course, and TDCI adds that sellers complete that course "and ongoing training every twenty-four (24) months thereafter" of no less than four hours. There is no first-term relief from either.
The only continuing-education exemption Tennessee grants runs to producers continuously licensed since 1 January 1994 - a grandfather clause for a shrinking population, not a break for new licensees. Nonresident producers satisfy Tennessee by satisfying their home state. Renewal mechanics, the carryover cap and the reinstatement window are covered in the Property & Casualty guide.
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