Mississippi Life & Health Insurance Exam — Study Guide

How to use this chapter

Everything before this point is national material. This chapter covers the Mississippi statutes and regulations tested on the state portion of the Mississippi Life, Accident & Health or Sickness Producer examination.

Learn the rule, then the number. Mississippi's rules are stable: there is a Mississippi Insurance Department, an elected Commissioner, a replacement regulation for life and annuities, a guaranty association, and an unfair trade practices statute. The numbers attached to them — hours, fees, dollar caps, day counts — do change. Learn the structure cold; confirm the digits at mid.ms.gov before you sit the exam and before you sell. A figure below that carries a dated citation was read from that named source on that date. A figure that still carries a bracketed verify-current flag was not confirmed from a primary source and must be checked with the Mississippi Insurance Department before you rely on it.

Use the citations. When a question feels ambiguous, ask which chapter of Title 83 it lives in — Ch. 17 (producers), Ch. 5 (trade practices, department powers), Ch. 7 (life), Ch. 9 (accident and health), Ch. 23 (guaranty association) — and the intended answer usually appears.

Sources: Mississippi Code of 1972, Title 83; Title 19 of the Mississippi Administrative Code (MAC); and the Mississippi Insurance Department at www.mid.ms.gov.

1. The Mississippi Insurance Department and the Commissioner

Mississippi regulates insurance through the Mississippi Insurance Department (MID), headed by the Commissioner of Insurance. The Commissioner is elected statewide to a four-year term and may be re-elected. By virtue of the office, the Commissioner is also the State Fire Marshal. If a question asks who the State Fire Marshal is, the answer is the Commissioner of Insurance.

Authority under Title 83, Chapters 1 and 5 is deliberately broad:

• Administer and enforce the insurance laws and adopt regulations (published as Title 19 MAC).
• Issue, renew, deny, suspend, and revoke licenses of producers, adjusters, agencies, and insurers.
• Examine records. The Commissioner and the Commissioner's examiners may examine the activities, operations, financial condition, and affairs of any person transacting insurance in Mississippi (§§ 83-5-37, 83-5-65); the Commissioner must examine every insurer licensed in this state not less frequently than once every five (5) years (Miss. Code Ann. § 83-5-205; checked 2026-09-05). Producers are not exempt — premium trust accounting, replacement files, and annuity recommendation files are all examinable.
• Hold hearings under statute and the Department's Rules of Practice and Procedure; a person denied a license or non-renewed gets written notice and may make written demand upon the Commissioner within ten (10) days for a hearing, and that hearing shall be held within thirty (30) days (Miss. Code Ann. § 83-17-71(2); checked 2026-09-05).
• Issue cease and desist orders, impose civil penalties per violation, order restitution, and refer matters for prosecution. Against a producer the civil penalty is not to exceed One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00) per violation (Miss. Code Ann. § 83-17-71(1), (4); checked 2026-09-05); on the cease-and-desist track the Commissioner may impose an administrative fine not to exceed Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00) per violation (Miss. Code Ann. § 83-5-41; checked 2026-09-05).
• Require replies. A producer must answer the Commissioner's inquiries; ignoring a Department letter is itself a violation, and it is how routine complaints become license actions.

At exam level, assume the Commissioner has the authority; the checks are procedural — notice, hearing, judicial review.

2. Producer licensing

Who must be licensed

An insurance producer is a person required to be licensed to sell, solicit, or negotiate insurance. Do any of those three for compensation in Mississippi and you need a license with a line of authority covering the product.

Exemptions (§ 83-17-57) are narrow: officers, directors, and salaried employees of an insurer or agency whose work is executive, administrative, managerial, clerical, or confined to underwriting, loss control, or inspection — provided they receive no commission — plus certain plan administrators and purely clerical staff. The common thread is the absence of commission-based selling.

Lines and the four steps

Relevant lines: Life, Accident & Health or Sickness, and the combined Life, Accident & Health or Sickness license. Selling variable life or variable annuities requires the life line plus the applicable FINRA securities registration; Mississippi adds no separate state pre-licensing course for the variable line, but both regulators must be satisfied.

1. Pre-licensing education — state-approved, 20 hours per line of authority, classroom or approved self-study (MID, Pre-Licensing and Continuing Education Guidelines and Provider Packet, § 3.A.I; checked 2026-09-05). Recent change: effective July 1, 2024, House Bill 819 exempts Life applicants from the 20-hour pre-licensing requirement — the Life line of authority only (MID, Producer/Individual Licensing; checked 2026-09-05). Accident & Health still carries its 20 hours. Trap: the older teaching point — that the combined Life, Accident & Health license is the sum of both lines, 40 hours — is what the exam vendor's July 2025 candidate handbook still prints, and it no longer describes what MID requires of a Mississippi resident. Learn MID's current rule and expect the stale figure as a distractor.
2. Pass the state examination — delivered by Pearson VUE, at a test center or online-proctored (OnVUE) for the Life, Accident & Health and combined producer exams. The combined Life, Accident & Health or Sickness Producer examination (code InsMS-LAH05) is 115 scored questions plus 10 unscored pretest questions, in 150 minutes; the Life-only and the Accident & Health-only examinations are 60 scored plus 10 pretest questions, in 120 minutes. The examination fee is $50, paid at reservation and non-refundable. The passing score is 65% on the Life only, the Accident & Health or Sickness only, and the combined Life, Accident & Health or Sickness Producer examinations — 70% on every other Mississippi insurance examination. A candidate who fails must wait one (1) day before rescheduling. Each exam is built from a published Mississippi content outline that separates general topics from a distinct Mississippi laws section (Pearson VUE, Mississippi Insurance Licensing Candidate Handbook, July 2025; Pearson VUE, Mississippi Insurance Content Outlines, effective May 1, 2024; checked 2026-09-05).
3. Apply — file the NAIC Uniform Application for Individual Insurance Producer License through the Department's licensing portal (Sircon) or NIPR with the license fee. The minimum age is 18; the license fee is $100.00 for residents and nonresidents alike, and the biennial renewal fee is $100.00 (Pearson VUE, Mississippi Insurance Licensing Candidate Handbook, July 2025, license fee table; MID, Insurance Producer License Instructions, item 3; checked 2026-09-05). A lapsed license may be reinstated within 12 months of expiration without retaking the examination, on payment of a 50% late fee and completion of any required continuing education; after 12 months a resident must redo pre-licensing and the state exam (MID, Insurance Producer License Instructions, item 3; MID, Licensing Updates FAQ; checked 2026-09-05). Applicants disclose background information and the Department reviews criminal and administrative history.
4. Get appointed.

Appointment and termination

A license lets you hold authority; an appointment lets you act for a specific insurer. A producer shall not act as an agent of an insurer unless appointed by that insurer (§ 83-17-75). The insurer files the appointment — the effective date must be within fifteen (15) days of receipt by MID (§ 83-17-75(2)) — and pays the statutory fee. Recent change: effective July 1, 2026, Senate Bill 2409 amended § 83-5-73 to raise the fee for filing and processing an agent's certificate of authority from Twenty-five Dollars ($25.00) to Fifty Dollars ($50.00); the separate fee for a certificate of authority to each general or district agent or manager stays $25.00 (SB 2409, 2026 Regular Session, § 3, amending Miss. Code Ann. § 83-5-73; MID, Licensing Appointments; checked 2026-09-05). Appointment renewal invoices are emailed on or about April 1 and are due May 31; a company must file terminations by March 15 to keep a producer off the renewal list, and there is no charge to terminate (MID, Licensing Appointments; checked 2026-09-05).

Under § 83-17-77, an insurer terminating a producer's appointment, employment, or contract must notify the Commissioner within thirty (30) days following the effective date of the termination when the reason is one of the grounds in § 83-17-71, then within fifteen (15) days after making that notification mail the producer a copy at the last known address; the producer has thirty (30) days after receiving it to file a written response (Miss. Code Ann. § 83-17-77; checked 2026-09-05). Good-faith reports carry immunity from civil liability absent actual malice and are confidential and privileged. A for-cause termination is a reportable event, and the producer is entitled to a copy of what was said.

Renewal and continuing education

Licenses renew biennially, keyed to the licensee's birth month, so a first term is a band with a minimum of 13 months and a maximum of 24 months rather than a clean 24. CE is therefore tiered by the length of the term: a license in effect 18 months or less requires 12 hours; a license in effect 19 to 24 months requires 24 hours, of which 3 must be ethics. The 24 hours is a total no matter how many lines of authority you hold — it does not double for a combined Life and Accident & Health license. The Department publishes a CE calculation chart cross-referencing month of issuance against birth month to show which tier applies (MID, Pre-Licensing and Continuing Education, and MID's producer CE calculation chart; MID, Pre-Licensing and Continuing Education Guidelines and Provider Packet, § 3.B.I–II; Pearson VUE, Mississippi Insurance Licensing Candidate Handbook, July 2025; checked 2026-09-05).

Rules that hold regardless of the numbers: no carry-over — "Carryover hours are not permitted," and credit counts only in the license period in which the course is taken; a licensee may repeat a course but earns the credit only once within the same license period; each licensee must keep continuing education certificates or course completions for at least five (5) years; electronic provider reporting, so credit is not earned until reported; and a CE waiver by affidavit for a producer who is sixty-five (65) or older with twenty-five (25) continuous years of licensure, added by House Bill 1084 effective April 17, 2023 (MID, Pre-Licensing and Continuing Education Guidelines and Provider Packet, § 3.B.IV, V, VII; MID, Producer/Individual Licensing; checked 2026-09-05). Trap: 65-and-25-years is the producer waiver; the bail agent waiver in the same guidelines is 65 and 20 years — different numbers for a different license. MID's published CE guidelines state no limit on the number of hours a licensee may earn in a single day [verify any daily cap with the Department — no daily cap appears in MID's published continuing education guidelines].

Product-specific training sits on top of ordinary CE and is a prerequisite to selling, not merely to renewing. Annuities: a producer must complete a one-time four (4) credit-hour Department-approved course covering the best-interest standard before soliciting or selling any annuity in Mississippi; a producer already trained under the pre-2022 rule had to add a one-time one (1) credit-hour best-interest course. Insurer product-specific training is required on top of that generic course (19 MAC Pt. 2, Ch. 18, Rule 18.07; MID notice to education providers, February 9, 2022; checked 2026-09-05). Flood: a one-time three (3) hour NFIP course satisfies the federal minimum training and education requirement for producers selling federal flood policies (MID, Pre-Licensing and Continuing Education; checked 2026-09-05). Long-term care: MID makes the licensee responsible for completing the LTC education requirement before selling long-term care, but does not publish the hour count in its guidelines or in the long-term care regulation [verify the long-term care training hours and any refresher with the Department — the figure is not published in MID's continuing education guidelines or in 19 MAC Pt. 3, Ch. 8]. A license does not remain in effect if education requirements and fees are not met by the due date.

Nonresident and temporary licenses

Nonresident licensing is reciprocal: a person licensed in good standing at home for the same lines files the Uniform Application for Individual Nonresident License, and the Department verifies home-state licensure through the national producer database — no repeat pre-licensing education or examination. Correspondingly, § 83-17-67 exempts an applicant previously licensed for the same lines in another state from Mississippi pre-licensing education and examination, provided the applicant is still licensed in that state or the application is received within ninety (90) days of the cancellation of the previous license (Miss. Code Ann. § 83-17-67; checked 2026-09-05). A producer moving to Mississippi must likewise apply within 90 days of clearing the resident license in the former state (MID, Insurance Producer License Instructions, item 8; checked 2026-09-05). A nonresident who becomes a Mississippi resident must convert by filing the appropriate uniform application; conversion is not automatic.

Temporary licenses exist as separate license types (Temporary Insurance Producer and Temporary Limited Lines Insurance Producer), providing business continuity on the death, disability, or military service of a licensed producer, or during agency wind-down or sale. They are issued at the Department's discretion after contact with the licensing division. The license fee for either temporary type is $100.00 (Pearson VUE, Mississippi Insurance Licensing Candidate Handbook, July 2025, license fee table; checked 2026-09-05), and the Temporary Limited Lines Insurance Producer license "is good for 120 days and may be issued one time" (MID, Licensing Updates Frequently Asked Questions; checked 2026-09-05). [verify the term of the plain Temporary Insurance Producer license with the Department — MID publishes its fee but not its duration.]

Grounds for denial, suspension, and revocation

§ 83-17-71 is the disciplinary spine and is heavily tested. The Commissioner may place on probation, suspend, revoke, or refuse to issue or renew a license, and levy a civil penalty per violation, for: incorrect, misleading, incomplete, or materially untrue information in an application; violating any insurance law, rule, subpoena, or order of this or another state's commissioner; obtaining a license through misrepresentation or fraud; improperly withholding, misappropriating, or converting money or property received in insurance business; intentionally misrepresenting contract or application terms; conviction of a felony; having committed an insurance unfair trade practice or fraud; fraudulent, coercive, or dishonest practices or demonstrated incompetence, untrustworthiness, or financial irresponsibility; a license denied, suspended, or revoked in another jurisdiction; forging a name on an insurance document; improperly using notes or reference materials on a licensing examination; knowingly accepting business from an unlicensed person; failing to comply with a child support order; and failing to pay state income tax or comply with an order to pay.

Procedurally: written notice, a written demand for a hearing within ten (10) days and a hearing within thirty (30) days; judicial review of final orders; and a producer whose license is revoked may not file another producer application within one (1) year from the effective date of the revocation or, if judicial review was sought, within one (1) year from the date of the final court order (Miss. Code Ann. § 83-17-71(2), (6); checked 2026-09-05).

§ 83-17-81 adds an affirmative self-reporting duty: report any administrative action in another jurisdiction or by another governmental agency in this state within thirty (30) days of the final disposition of the matter, and any criminal prosecution in any jurisdiction within thirty (30) days of the initial pretrial hearing date, with the relevant documents attached (Miss. Code Ann. § 83-17-81; checked 2026-09-05). Waiting for the Department to find out is itself a violation.