Do You Need a Pre-Licensing Course for the Tennessee Life & Health Exam? (2026)

No. Tennessee does not require a pre-licensing course for the Life or Accident & Health license, and it has not since March 21, 2023. You do not need to buy a course before you book the exam.

Tennessee Public Chapter No. 57 of 2023 (Senate Bill 1369) was signed by Governor Bill Lee on March 21, 2023, and took effect upon becoming law. It amended Tenn. Code Ann. §56-6-105, deleted subdivision (a)(3) of §56-6-106, which had contained the pre-licensing course-of-study requirement, and rewrote the exam exemption rules in §56-6-109. Before that, Tennessee did require a course. It does not now.

The current Pearson VUE candidate handbook confirms this. Its general resident producer requirements list no pre-licensing hours for any line of authority, including Life and Accident & Health.

The handbook lists three conditions the commissioner must be satisfied of before approving a resident license:

• You are at least 18 years old.
• You are a Tennessee resident.
• You are competent, trustworthy, financially responsible, and have a good business reputation.

In practice you also pass the exam for each line, complete a fingerprint-based background check scheduled through identogo.com, and file an application. The producer application fee is $50 per license application, not per line. NIPR charges a transaction fee for electronic filing; we do not quote its amount, and the same goes for the fingerprint fee. The regulator is the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance (TDCI).

With no course to complete, the exams are the real hurdle. You sit a Life exam and an Accident and Health exam, each with 68 scored questions in 105 minutes, and need a scaled score of 70 on each. The 2025 first-time pass rates were 71% for Life and 64% for Accident and Health. See how hard the exams are and the full format.

LanePrep is exam preparation, not a state-mandated course. It does not satisfy any legal requirement, because there is none to satisfy. It is audio-first prep for the exam itself: listen on your commute, then test yourself with practice questions on the outline sections, including the Tennessee laws and departmental rules. Because nothing mandates a course, you choose how much preparation you need.

The total cost is mostly exam fees: $55 for each test-center exam plus the $50 filing fee, with fingerprint and NIPR fees on top. See how much the license costs.

Start with the free course preview or the free practice questions.