California Life, Accident and Health or Sickness Agent License Examination — exam facts
California
Every source below was read on 2026-09-03
| Administering body | California Department of Insurance (CDI), Producer Licensing Bureau — exam delivered by PSI Services LLC PSI runs the exam at computer test centers in California, including CDI's own test center in Los Angeles, and also offers it by online remote proctoring. Before the licence is issued (not before the exam), California Insurance Code section 1749 requires 12 hours of study on ethics and the California Insurance Code; the former 20-hour per-line prelicensing course was repealed from 1 January 2026. Source: PSI / California Department of Insurance — Candidate Information Bulletin for California Insurance License Examinees (revised March 2026) (2026-09-03) |
|---|---|
| Questions | 150 questions CDI and PSI publish no per-exam count of unscored items — only the rule that “a small number of one to ten experimental items, generally, approximately 10% of the number of questions” may be added, unscored, and that they count against examination time. Do not compute a per-exam figure from that. Source: PSI / California Department of Insurance — Candidate Information Bulletin for California Insurance License Examinees (revised March 2026) (2026-09-03) |
| Time limit | Not published by California Department of Insurance Two official sources disagree, so no single figure is shown: the PSI/CDI Candidate Information Bulletin (revised March 2026) allots 195 minutes to the combined Life, Accident and Health or Sickness exam, while CDI's own Examination Times table says 3 hours. Both still differ. What we read and found nothing in: PSI / California Department of Insurance — Candidate Information Bulletin for California Insurance License Examinees (revised March 2026) (2026-09-03) · CDI — Examination Times and Number of Questions (CDI website table; stale on languages and, for time limits, disagrees with the CIB) (2026-09-03) |
| Passing score | 60% CDI and the Candidate Information Bulletin both state that producer licence examinations require a 60 percent score to pass. No per-section cut score is published. Retakes: under California Insurance Code section 1682, an examinee who has failed an examination 10 times is barred from that examination for 12 months from the last failed attempt. Source: CDI — Examination Times and Number of Questions (CDI website table; stale on languages and, for time limits, disagrees with the CIB) (2026-09-03) |
| Fees |
The renewal fee equals the filing fee; a late renewal is charged at a higher rate. The Live Scan total is the sum of three separately published components, and the Capital Live Scan vendor is new — the Candidate Information Bulletin carries a front-page alert about the change. Source: CDI — Licensing Fees (2026-09-03) |
| Languages offered | English · Spanish · Simplified Chinese · Vietnamese · Korean · Tagalog Offered under AB 451 (Chapter 136, Statutes of 2023), which required CDI to offer license examinations in Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean from 1 January 2024; § 1677 adds Tagalog from 1 July 2024, making six. CDI's own Examination Times table is stale on this point and still lists only Spanish variants. Source: CDI — Notice: License Examinations Available in Multiple Languages (AB 451, Chapter 136, Statutes of 2023) (PDF) (2026-09-03) |
Change log
- 2026-09-22Fact sheet created for the California state book from the PSI/CDI Candidate Information Bulletin (revised March 2026) and CDI's own pages, all re-read that day. The time limit is left unpublished because the bulletin and CDI's table still disagree.
- 2026-01-01AB 943 (Chapter 566, Statutes of 2025) repealed the 20-hour per-line prelicensing course requirement for California producers. Only the 12-hour ethics and California Insurance Code course remains. The familiar 32-hour and 52-hour figures are repealed law; CDI's own website still describes them in at least two places.
- 2024-01-01Under AB 451, CDI began offering license examinations in Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean; Tagalog followed on 1 July 2024.