Tennessee Life & Health Study Guide

Holding both lines means one more body of Tennessee law matters to you than to a single-line producer: the guaranty association. It is the state’s answer to “what happens when the insurer fails,” it is pure Tennessee statute, and its limits are exactly the sort of thing a state-specific item can test with a single figure.

Two associations, not one

Tennessee runs separate guaranty funds, in separate parts of the same chapter:

• The Tennessee Life and Health Insurance Guaranty Association — T.C.A. §56-12-201 et seq.
• The Tennessee Insurance Guaranty Association (property and casualty) — §56-12-101 et seq.

They have different limits and different structures. Mixing them is the first way candidates lose marks here; the P&C fund’s famous $100 floor and $100,000 cap belong to the other association entirely.

One more unit trap: §56-12-204(c)(2)(A) opens “with respect to one (1) life, regardless of the number of policies or contracts.” Every limit in the table below is measured per life — not per policy, and not per contract owner.

The life and health limits

Under T.C.A. §56-12-204, coverage per insured is:

Coverage	Limit
Life death benefit	$300,000
Life net cash surrender / withdrawal value	$100,000
Annuity present value, per life	$250,000
Health benefit plans	$500,000
Disability income and long-term care	$300,000
Other health coverages	$100,000

The aggregate — and the hinge that moves it

The statute caps the association at “an aggregate of three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000) in benefits with respect to any one (1) life.” Then it lifts that ceiling to $500,000 where health benefit plan coverage is involved.

So a client holding a life policy and a disability income policy from the same failed insurer sits under a $300,000 aggregate, however generous the individual limits look. Add major medical and the ceiling moves to $500,000. When a question takes the trouble to specify the type of health coverage, it is telling you which aggregate applies.

Free look: three separate rules, and no general one

Tennessee has no general statutory free look for a new individual life policy or annuity. The “ten days” almost everyone quotes is §56-26-129, a health provision applying to “every individual accident and health policy or contract.”

What exists on the life side is narrower and specific:

• Replacement — 20 days. Rule 0780-01-24-.07(4) gives the applicant “a right to an unconditional refund of all premiums paid, which right may be exercised within a period of twenty days commencing from the date of delivery of the policy.”
• Long-term care — 30 days from delivery, under §56-42-105(f)(1). LTC also carries its own producer training gate: a one-time eight-hour course under §56-42-109(a)(1), plus ongoing training every 24 months by rule.

Two product trainings, both on this side of the house

Neither counts as continuing education, and neither is discharged by it:

• Annuities. A one-time four-credit best-interest training under Tenn. Comp. R. & Regs. 0780-01-86-.07, following Tennessee’s adoption of the NAIC model (amended effective 17 April 2023) with its obligations of care, disclosure, conflict of interest and documentation. Producers trained before the amendment owe either a fresh four-credit course or an additional one-time one-credit course.
• Long-term care. A one-time eight-hour course under §56-42-109(a)(1), plus ongoing training every 24 months by rule, before any LTC sale.

It is worth being precise about why these survive. Tennessee requires no pre-licensing education for Life or Accident & Health — the only line with a statutory course is title insurance, at 30 hours. Product training and entry education were always separate obligations, so the absence of one says nothing about the other.

One licence, one CE obligation

Life and Accident & Health are two lines of authority on a single licence. That means one application fee, one renewal, one expiry date — and, importantly, one continuing education requirement: 24 credit hours per 24-month term, three of them ethics, exactly what a single-line producer owes.

Tennessee counts the licensee, not the lines. It is the strongest structural argument for taking both examinations: the ongoing burden does not move.

The one exemption, and what it isn’t

A producer continuously licensed since 1 January 1994 is exempt from continuing education. That is a grandfather clause for a shrinking population — not relief for a producer in a first term, and not a general hardship exemption. Reading it the other way has cost people licences.