How to Pass the New York Life and Health Insurance Exam

To pass the New York life and health insurance exam, you need to finish a 40-hour state-approved pre-licensing course, register with PSI Services for the Series 10-55 combined exam, and score at least 70 percent on 150 multiple-choice questions covering life insurance, accident and health insurance, and New York insurance law. The exam fee is $49, the time limit is two and a half hours, and you get your score before you leave the testing center.¹

The Exam at a Glance

The combined life, accident, and health exam is designated Series 10-55. It contains 150 scored multiple-choice questions with four answer choices each, and you have 150 minutes to finish. PSI also embeds 5 to 10 unscored pretest questions that are being evaluated for future exams; those don’t count against your score and don’t eat into your time.¹

The passing standard is a scaled score of 70 percent. If you miss that mark, you can reschedule and take it again, but you pay the $49 fee each time. If you only want one line of authority, the shorter exams are Series 10-51 (life only) and Series 10-52 (accident and health only), each with 100 questions and a two-hour limit. Most candidates take the combined exam because it opens both lines at once.¹

Finish the Pre-Licensing Course First

You cannot sit for the exam until you complete a course approved by the Superintendent of Financial Services. For the combined authority, that’s a minimum of 40 hours of classroom instruction or the online equivalent, required under Insurance Law Section 2103.² A life-only or accident-and-health-only course is 20 hours, but taking both separately costs more time than the 40-hour combined course.³

You must be at least 18 to apply for a license. When you finish the course, the provider issues a Certificate of Completion with a school code. Both the certificate number and the school code go into your PSI registration, so keep them handy. The certificate has an expiration date. If it expires before you pass the exam, you retake the entire course at your own expense, so schedule the test soon after finishing the coursework rather than letting it sit.

What the Exam Actually Tests

The content splits into three broad areas: general insurance principles, life insurance, and accident and health insurance. New York-specific law and ethics run through all of them, with roughly 8 percent of questions dedicated to insurance regulation as its own category.¹

Life Insurance

Life topics account for roughly half the exam. Expect questions on term, whole, and universal life; group and credit life; and how premiums are built from mortality, investment return, and expense factors. Standard contract provisions such as the grace period and the incontestability clause come up regularly, along with beneficiary designations and policy loans. Business uses of life insurance are tested too, including buy-sell agreements and key-person coverage.¹

Taxes show up. You should know how surrenders, death benefits, and exchanges are treated. Under IRC Section 1035, you can swap one life policy for another, or a life policy for an annuity, without triggering a taxable event, but only through a direct transfer between insurers. If the policyholder takes a check and then buys a new policy, the IRS treats the proceeds as taxable income.⁴

Accident and Health

The health side covers medical expense insurance, disability income, long-term care, and Medicare supplement plans. Federal rules show up too. You should be able to name the Affordable Care Act’s ten categories of essential health benefits that qualified health plans must cover, including hospitalization, prescription drugs, maternity care, and mental health services.⁵ COBRA is another reliable source of questions: employees and dependents have 60 days to elect continuation coverage after employer-sponsored coverage ends, and coverage typically lasts 18 to 36 months depending on the qualifying event.⁶

New York Law and Ethics

New York’s Insurance Law drives a lot of the questions you’ll see. Section 2324 prohibits rebating: you cannot offer a client anything of value beyond what the policy specifies as an inducement to buy insurance, except for promotional merchandise worth $15 or less.⁷ Know the difference between misrepresentation and twisting (persuading someone to replace a policy through misleading comparisons), and learn the unfair claim settlement practices listed in Section 2601.⁸ Federal privacy rules are fair game as well. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act treats insurance agents as financial institutions, which means explaining information-sharing practices to customers, giving them the right to opt out of certain third-party sharing, and maintaining a security program to protect customer data.⁹

How to Register With PSI

PSI Services is the only exam vendor for New York insurance licensing. You register on the PSI site, not through Prometric or any other testing company.¹⁰ To book an appointment, have these ready:

A government-issued photo ID showing your full legal name. Any mismatch between your ID and your registration will get you turned away at the door.
Your Social Security number.
The school code and Certificate of Completion number from your pre-licensing provider.
The $49 exam fee, paid electronically at booking.¹

Check every field before you submit. A typo in your name or a wrong school code can hold up your appointment, and untangling it with PSI support takes time you’d rather spend studying.

Test Day

At the PSI testing center, staff verify your photo ID and may take biometric scans. Personal items stay outside the testing room, including phones, notes, and calculators. The proctor walks you through the computer interface before your timed session starts.

When you submit your answers, the system scores the exam immediately. You get a printed score report from the proctor before you leave. A pass on that report is your proof of completion for the license application. If you didn’t pass, the report breaks your performance down by content area so you know where to concentrate before your next attempt.

How to Study for It

Weight your prep the way the exam is weighted. Life insurance is roughly half the test, so start there. Get comfortable with the mechanics of each policy type, the contract provisions that appear on every policy, and the tax rules for surrenders, death benefits, and 1035 exchanges. Move to accident and health next, and drill the federal frameworks (ACA essential health benefits, COBRA windows and durations) because they generate predictable questions.

Save time at the end for New York law. Rebating limits, the definition of twisting, and Section 2601’s unfair claim settlement practices are the kind of material that gets tested word-for-word rather than conceptually, so flashcards work well. If you fail on your first try, use the content-area breakdown on your score report to target the weakest section rather than restarting your prep from scratch. Paying the $49 fee twice is cheaper than losing another week of income to a course you don’t need to retake.

1
PSI licensure:certification. New York State Insurance Department Candidate Information Bulletin
2
New York State Senate. New York Code ISC 2103 – Insurance Agents; Licensing
3
Department of Financial Services. Agent and Broker Prelicensing Education
4
Internal Revenue Service. Certain Exchanges of Insurance Policies (Rev. Rul. 2007-24)
5
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Information on Essential Health Benefits (EHB) Benchmark Plans
6
U.S. Department of Labor. COBRA Continuation Coverage
7
New York State Department of Financial Services. OGC Opinion No. 05-02-32: Rebates and Unfair Competition
8
New York State Senate. New York Insurance Code 2601 – Unfair Claim Settlement Practices; Penalties
9
Federal Trade Commission. Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
10
Department of Financial Services. Information for Insurance Agents and Brokers