What This License Is
Virginia's Life and Annuities line of authority covers life insurance and annuity contracts sold in the Commonwealth. Read the line name closely: annuities are inside this license, not bolted on. There is no separate Virginia annuity credential to chase.
The regulator is unusual enough to be worth a paragraph before anything else. Virginia has no insurance department. Licensing runs through the Bureau of Insurance, which sits inside the State Corporation Commission — a constitutional body that is also a court of record. The three SCC members are elected by joint vote of both houses of the General Assembly to staggered six-year terms, and the Commissioner of Insurance is an employee the Commission places at the head of the Bureau (Va. Code §§ 12.1-6, 12.1-16). So the Commissioner is neither elected nor appointed by the Governor, and every grant of licensing and disciplinary authority in Title 38.2 runs to the Commission, not to the Commissioner personally.
One vocabulary note that shows up on the exam. Virginia's statutes head the chapter "Insurance Agents" and use agent as the operative term; § 38.2-1800 makes "producer" a synonym. The document you receive is an insurance agent license.
The structural fact that shapes your decision: Virginia offers both a standalone Life and Annuities exam (Series 11-05) and a combined Life, Annuities and Health exam (Series 11-01). Both cost $35. If you know you want both lines, the combined exam is strictly cheaper — one $35 sitting instead of two. The section below explains the catch, which is not about price.
Exam Options & Format
The Life and Annuities exam is Prometric Series 11-05 — 90 scored questions plus 15 unscored pretest items, 105 questions in all, 2 hours, $35. Pretest items are seeded to be trialled for future forms and, in the bulletin's words, "will not be counted for or against you in the final examination score."
| Exam route | Scored / total questions | Time | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series 11-05, Virginia Life and Annuities — this license | 90 scored / 105 total | 2 hr | $35 |
| Series 11-01, Virginia Life, Annuities and Health — both lines | 140 scored / 150 total | 2 hr 30 min | $35 |
Virginia does not run a separate state-law exam or a separate state section. Virginia law is woven into an "Insurance Regulation" domain and scattered through the substantive domains — one form, one timer, one score.
Now the catch, and it is the reason not to reflexively pick the combined exam. The standalone 11-05 loads Virginia regulation at 17% of the form; the combined 11-01 loads it at 10%. In raw counts that is 15 Virginia-regulation questions out of 90 on 11-05 against 14 out of 140 on 11-01. A candidate who studies from combined-exam material and then sits 11-05 will walk in materially under-prepared on Virginia law — the same absolute number of state questions, concentrated into a much smaller form. The rest of 11-05 breaks down as General Insurance 10%, Life Basics 15%, Life Policies 20%, Provisions, Options and Riders 18%, Annuities 12%, Federal Tax 4% and Qualified Plans 4%.
Registration is through Prometric. The fee is per attempt and nonrefundable. Fail and you wait 24 hours before rebooking; Prometric's own Virginia FAQ softens that to 24 to 48 hours before the system will accept a new reservation. There is no lifetime or annual cap on attempts, but § 38.2-1817 imposes a 30-calendar-day waiting period on a resident applicant after a third failure — the statute writes the rule for residents.
Most Tested Topics on the Virginia Life & Annuities Exam
Virginia's life-policy provisions sit in Title 38.2 and they are, on the whole, close to the national model — which is exactly what makes them dangerous. The deviations are small numbers rather than structural differences, and a candidate coasting on national prep will get most of the table right and lose the four or five questions that are worth the most. From the TESTivity Virginia regulations curriculum, statute-verified:
| Virginia life concept | The rule, and where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Grace period, individual life | Not less than 31 days for any premium after the first — not 30, and not "one month" (§ 38.2-3303) |
| Incontestability, life | 2 years from date of issue, during the lifetime of the insured, except for nonpayment of premiums (§ 38.2-3305) |
| Free look, individual life | 10 days from delivery, and it reaches individual life policies only. The owner returns the policy with a written cancellation request, it is void from the beginning, and the full premium is refunded (§ 38.2-3301) |
| Reinstatement window, life | 3 years from default, on evidence of insurability, payment of arrears with interest, and reinstatement of any policy indebtedness (§ 38.2-3311) |
| Reinstatement interest ceiling | Not exceeding 6% per year on overdue premiums — a hard statutory cap most states do not set (§ 38.2-3311) |
| Policy loans, life | Available only after the policy has been in force three policy years. A fixed loan rate may not exceed 8% per year whenever the policy was issued; what July 1, 1981 divides is the alternative — policies issued on or after that date may instead carry an adjustable maximum tied to Moody's Corporate Bond Yield Average (§ 38.2-3308) |
| Misstatement of age, life | Benefit adjusted to what the premium paid would have purchased at the correct age at the time the policy was issued (§ 38.2-3306) |
| Nonforfeiture options | Cash surrender value, reduced paid-up insurance, extended term insurance |
| Viatical settlements | Regulated — the Virginia Viatical Settlements Act, § 38.2-6000 et seq. |
| Viator's rescission window | At least 15 calendar days from receipt of the proceeds — the clock runs from the money, not from signing, and Virginia has no "whichever is later" alternative. If the insured dies during the rescission period the contract is deemed rescinded (§§ 38.2-6008(C), 38.2-6007(A)(5)) |
| Variable products | A Virginia Life license plus FINRA Series 6 or 7 and Series 63 — Virginia issues a separate Variable Contract line requiring a CRD number |
| Annuity standard of conduct | Virginia adopted the NAIC best interest standard |
Three rows in that table are where the marks are. Thirty-one days, not thirty — Virginia writes the grace period as a floor of 31 days, and an item writer who wants to separate the careful candidate from the confident one will offer 30 as a distractor. Six percent is the reinstatement interest ceiling, and it is a number national material almost never carries because most states do not legislate one; a question that asks what an insurer may charge on arrears has a Virginia-specific answer. The same six percent turns up in a second place worth knowing — § 38.2-3303 lets an insurer deduct an overdue premium, with interest not exceeding six percent annually, from a claim settled during the grace period. And three policy years is the wait before a policy loan exists at all, which contradicts the common shorthand that loans are available as soon as there is cash value — note too that the 8% ceiling on a fixed loan rate applies whenever the policy was issued, so July 1, 1981 is not a dividing line for the cap, only for whether an adjustable rate was available as an alternative.
The viatical rescission window is worth a second look because of where Virginia starts the clock. § 38.2-6008(C) requires every viatical settlement contract to give the viator "an unconditional right to rescind the contract for at least 15 calendar days from the receipt of the viatical settlement proceeds" — from receipt of the money, not from execution. So a provider that pays slowly delays the start of the window rather than running it out, and a viator who signed six weeks ago but has not been paid has not lost anything. Note also that if the insured dies during the rescission period, the contract is deemed rescinded.
One more contrast to carry into the room: the two-year incontestability period for life sits at § 38.2-3305, and the two-year contestability rule for accident and sickness sits in an entirely different section with different wording. If you are also sitting the Health exam, do not let them merge.
Applying for Your Virginia License, Step by Step
Virginia's application is short, cheap and unforgiving about sequence. There is no pre-licensing course to finish first and no pre-exam application to file, which means everything happens in a compressed window after you pass. Work it in this order.
Step 1 — Get fingerprinted at a Fieldprint live-scan site. This is the step most stale material omits entirely. Since January 1, 2021, Va. Code § 38.2-1819 requires that every resident individual "shall, at the time of applying for a new license, be fingerprinted in a form and manner prescribed by the Commission." Prints and personal descriptive information are forwarded through the Central Criminal Records Exchange to the FBI. The vendor is Fieldprint, using live scan. You pay — the statute says so expressly — and the Bureau does not publish the amount, so ask Fieldprint when you schedule. Two clocks attach: prints must be no more than 90 days old when the application is submitted, and once on file with the Bureau they are good for one year, so an applicant printed within the previous 12 months is not reprinted.
Step 2 — Register with Prometric and sit the exam. $35 for Series 11-05, at a test center or remotely through ProProctor. Bring two forms of ID. Your score appears on screen at the end and an emailed report follows.
Step 3 — Apply through Sircon. Virginia's own materials name Sircon first — sircon.com/virginia — and NIPR also supports resident licensing. The Bureau operates no separate consumer-facing application system for producers. The fee is $15 per line of authority, nonrefundable and nontransferable. You must use a Virginia address for both mailing and residence, and you must be at least 18.
Step 4 — Attach everything the first time. The SCC's applying page also references a Criminal History Record Report from the Virginia State Police that must be less than 90 days old, alongside the Fieldprint submission. And here Virginia's own sources disagree about how long you have to complete a partial file: the Prometric bulletin and NIPR both say an application is closed after 30 calendar days without complete documentation, while the SCC page says the Bureau extended that window from 30 days to 90 days. We are not going to pick a winner for you. Submit everything with the application and the conflict never touches you.
Step 5 — Watch the 183-day wall, and read its trigger. § 38.2-1817: "If the applicant fails to obtain the appropriate license from the Commission within 183 calendar days from the date he passes the examination, the examination grade shall be considered invalid and the examination fee and application processing fee shall be forfeited." The clock runs to obtaining the license, not to filing the application — and the Bureau's processing floor is 15 business days, or 30 business days or more if you answer any background question affirmatively (the SCC quotes 30 to 60 business days where a conviction is involved). Your real deadline to file is therefore well short of 183 days.
Step 6 — Wait for the license before you do anything. The bulletin is blunt: "You cannot sell, solicit or negotiate insurance contracts until the Bureau issues your license," and "passing an exam does not guarantee that you will be issued a license." Your NPN is assigned within 48 to 72 hours of licensure.
What It Costs
Two published line items: $35 to Prometric for the Series 11-05 exam and $15 to the Bureau for the Life and Annuities line of authority. That is $50 on a first-attempt pass, which is close to the least any state charges for a life license.
The third line item exists but has no printed number. The Fieldprint live-scan fingerprint fee is real and mandatory, § 38.2-1819 assigns it to the applicant, and neither the Bureau nor Prometric publishes the amount. We will not invent one. Ask Fieldprint at the point of scheduling and treat it as a modest but non-zero cost.
What is genuinely absent is pre-licensing tuition. Virginia requires no course for this line — no hours, no certificate, no approved provider to pay. Title is the only Virginia line that carries a pre-licensing requirement, at 16 classroom hours before you may even register for that exam.
Two fee mechanics worth knowing before you book. Both fees are nonrefundable, and the bulletin adds a specific warning: if you take an exam unnecessarily or are found unqualified, neither the exam fee nor the application processing fee will be refunded. And if you let the 183 days lapse, § 38.2-1817 forfeits both — you pay the $35 and the $15 again. Retakes are another full $35 each, with no attempt cap but a 30-calendar-day freeze on a resident applicant after a third failure.
Eligibility Requirements
You must be at least 18 and you must use a Virginia address for both mailing and residence. Beyond that, Virginia's gate is a character gate rather than an education gate: there is no pre-licensing requirement for this line, and the substantive screening happens through the fingerprint check under § 38.2-1819 and the background questions on the uniform application.
Answer those questions completely. An affirmative answer does not disqualify you — it moves you from the 15-business-day processing lane to the 30-business-day-or-more lane, and the SCC quotes 30 to 60 business days where a conviction is involved. An omission is a different problem entirely, because a false statement on an application is itself grounds for action against the license.
If you already hold a life license in another state and are moving to Virginia, § 38.2-1817 waives the prelicensing examination for the same lines of authority — provided you are currently licensed, or apply within 90 days of the prior license's cancellation and are in good standing. The Property & Casualty guide covers reciprocity in full, including the professional-designation waivers that Virginia, unlike Florida and Texas, does not offer.
Variable products need one more credential. Virginia issues a separate Variable Contract line of authority, and NIPR requires a FINRA CRD number on that application — in practice the Life license plus Series 6 or 7 and Series 63.
Keeping Your License Active
Important CE details: Sixteen hours per biennium covers one license type, and Virginia counts Life and Annuities together with Health as a single type. Add a license from a second category and the requirement rises to 24 hours with a minimum of 8 in each.
16 credit hours per biennium, including at least 3 hours of insurance ethics (Va. Code § 38.2-1866). The 16-hour figure is the one-license-type case, and Virginia's definition of "one type" is the part people miss: Life and Annuities plus Health together count as a single license type. Hold a license in a second category — Property and Casualty, say — and the requirement rises to 24 hours with a minimum of 8 in each category.
Your license expires biennially at the end of your birth month, in odd-numbered years if you were born in an odd-numbered year and even years if you were born in an even one. Renewal is $10 per line of authority. The Property & Casualty guide covers the renewal machinery in full — the 90-day window, the reinstatement math, and the CE traps that catch careful people.
One rule specific to this line's product set: no more than 75 percent of your required credits may come from courses sponsored or given by or through an insurance company or insurance agency (§ 38.2-1866(J)). A life producer whose carrier runs generous in-house training can quietly blow past that ceiling and arrive at renewal with hours that do not all count.
And one warning that is not line-specific but belongs on every page: under § 38.2-1869, failing to complete CE administratively terminates each license held — not merely the line you were short on. Come up two hours light on your life CE and you lose your P&C license with it.
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