Texas life and health exam: what's on it in 2026

The Texas General Lines - Life, Accident and Health agent exam is run by Pearson VUE for the Texas Department of Insurance. Pearson VUE re-issued the content outline (publication #124401) effective September 1, 2026, so if you're studying from an older guide, it's worth checking the new outline before you trust any breakdown. Here's what the current one actually covers, and how the exam is scored.

The format, in numbers

These come from the Pearson VUE candidate handbook (#124400) and the outline:

• 145 questions total: 130 scored plus 15 unscored pretest questions mixed in.
• 150 minutes to finish.
• $49 exam fee, paid when you reserve the exam.
• Passing score: 70, on a scaled score from 0 to 100.
• No penalty for guessing, so never leave a question blank.
• Unlimited retakes: if you fail, the handbook lets you schedule a new exam within one day, with no limit on attempts. You pay the fee again each time.

Two details trip people up. First, the scaled score is not a percent correct, so "70 to pass" doesn't mean exactly 70% of questions right. Second, you're scored on the exam as a whole, not on each half separately. A strong General Knowledge half can carry a weaker state half, and the other way around.

Half one: Life and Health General Knowledge (100 scored questions)

This is the national half, and it's split evenly between life and health.

Life (50 questions):

• Types of life policies (15): whole life, limited-pay and single-premium, universal and variable life, term in all its forms, joint and survivorship, and annuities.
• Riders, provisions, options and exclusions (15): beneficiaries, grace period, reinstatement, incontestability, nonforfeiture and settlement options, dividends, waiver of premium, and the rest of the policy mechanics.
• Completing the application, underwriting and delivering the policy (12): signatures, premium receipts, replacement, privacy and disclosure rules, risk classification and policy delivery.
• Retirement and other insurance concepts (8): qualified and nonqualified plans, group life, business uses like key person and buy-sell, life settlements, and how life insurance is taxed.

Health (50 questions):

• Types of health policies (16): disability income, AD&D, medical expense plans, managed care (HMO, PPO, POS), HSAs and HRAs, long-term care and limited-benefit policies.
• Policy provisions, clauses and riders (15): the mandatory and optional uniform provisions, renewability, and cost-sharing terms like deductibles, coinsurance and copays.
• Social insurance (6): Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security disability.
• Other insurance concepts (5): coordination of benefits, subrogation, and health insurance taxation.
• Field underwriting procedures (8): the health side of applications and underwriting.

Half two: Texas State Specific (30 scored questions)

This half tests Texas law, and the outline cites a Texas Insurance Code or Administrative Code section for every item. It has four parts:

• Texas rules common to life and health (14): the Commissioner's powers, licensing types and exemptions, appointment, continuing education, license discipline, unfair trade practices like rebating and misrepresentation, and the Life and Health Insurance Guaranty Association.
• Texas statutes and rules for life only (6): advertising, the buyer's guide and policy summary, Texas life policy provisions, replacement duties and nonforfeiture law.
• Texas statutes and rules for accident and health only (7): mandated benefits like newborn coverage, Medicare supplement standards, small group rules and the ACA.
• HMOs (3): Texas HMO definitions, evidence of coverage and enrollment rules.

Thirty questions is 23% of the scored exam. That's a meaningful share of your score, and it's the part a national study guide won't teach you.

What to do with this breakdown

Because scoring is on the whole exam, the right move is to weight your study time roughly by question count rather than trying to "pass each half." Application and underwriting, health policy provisions and the Texas common rules are the heaviest single areas. Short sections like HMOs (3 questions) deserve a pass, not a week.

For turning the passing score into a sense of how many questions you can afford to miss, the exam pass score calculator gives you a working estimate. Keep in mind it works on raw percentages, and this exam reports a scaled score, so treat the result as a guide rather than an exact cutoff. How many questions can you miss and still pass covers the general idea.

Study it in the order it builds

Encodr's free Texas Life and Health course has 1,101 cards across 19 units, built against the 2026 outline. The units run in teaching order rather than outline order: insurance basics and contracts first, then life products, provisions and underwriting, then health products and provisions, then the Texas law units, so each unit builds on the one before it. How to study for the Texas life and health exam walks through a practical plan, and if you're not sure you need both lines, Texas life-only vs life and health license compares the two exams.