Is the South Carolina Life & Health Exam Hard? Pass Rates and Difficulty (2026)

The South Carolina Life, Accident & Health producer exam is moderately hard, and the honest figure is a first-time pass rate in the mid-50s on the combined exam. NAIC compiled data for first-time, English-language candidates shows 56.3% passing the combined Life, Accident and Health exam in 2025 (3,481 candidates) and 64.6% in 2024 (463 candidates). The Life-only exam ran 55.8% in 2025 and 59.5% in 2024. The Accident and Health-only exam ran 51.9% in 2025 and 51.2% in 2024.

Read those numbers with care. The 2025 candidate counts are many times the 2024 counts for every exam, and we could not establish which year's volume is the unusual one. Treat each year as a snapshot, not a trend: nothing here shows the exam getting harder or easier. What the data does support is simple. A large share of first-time candidates do not pass, and the Accident and Health side sits below Life in both years.

The compiled data does not report repeat-taker pass rates, so we cannot tell you how retakers do. We will not guess.

The combined exam (outline code InsSC-LAH03) has 130 scored questions: 100 general knowledge and 30 South Carolina-specific. Ten more are unscored pretest items, for 140 in total, and you have 150 minutes. Pearson VUE delivers it, and the fee is $59 per attempt. The passing score is a scaled 70 on a 0 to 100 scale, set by the South Carolina Department of Insurance.

The single-line exams are shorter: 75 scored questions (50 general, 25 South Carolina-specific) plus 10 pretest items, with 120 minutes. The full format is laid out in our format and passing-score guide.

1. Two bodies of knowledge, one score. The general portion covers life insurance in four outline sections and accident and sickness insurance in five, plus social insurance. The combined exam is scored as a single result. The handbook is explicit that you cannot be licensed for either line unless you pass the complete exam, so a strong life half does not rescue a weak health half.
2. South Carolina law is its own block. Thirty scored questions test state rules: 18 on laws pertinent to all lines, 6 on life insurance and 6 on accident and health. The outline cites specific parts of Title 38 and specific regulations on replacement, long-term care, Medicare supplement, continuing education and privacy. National study material covers little of this.
3. Precise vocabulary. The exam separates guaranteed renewable from noncancelable, own-occupation from any-occupation, a settlement option from a nonforfeiture option, and each Medicare part from the others. Each pair looks alike to a beginner and each pair is a trap.
4. Length. A hundred and forty items in 150 minutes is workable for someone who has drilled, but it punishes hesitation and second-guessing.

Nobody publishes a profile of the candidates who fail, so what follows is judgment from how the exam is built, not from data. Failures tend to come from the same few places:

• Treating the state-law block as an afterthought, when it is 30 scored questions.
• Knowing one line well and coasting on the other. The Accident and Health pass rate is the lower of the two in both years, which suggests that side catches people out.
• Recognising terms instead of reasoning through scenarios. The questions describe a client and ask what happens next.
• Rushing back to retake without diagnosing which outline sections cost the points.

The exam is multiple choice, the content outline is published section by section with item counts, and a failed attempt costs $59 and a 24-hour wait. That makes preparation a question of coverage and repetition. If you know how many items each section carries, you can spend study time in proportion. The largest single sections are the South Carolina all-lines law section (18 items), Accident and Sickness: Types of Policies (16 items), and three sections of 15 items each: Life types of policies, Life riders and provisions, and Accident and Sickness provisions.

Study in outline order, then drill by topic. Listen to the audio lessons while you commute, and use free practice sets to find the sections where you lose marks. The free practice question hub links to every set, including the seven topic sets that match the outline. When you want the full audio course and the question bank, start from the course preview.

Then sit a full-length run and review every miss by outline section. Our guide on passing on the first try turns this into a plan, and the cost breakdown shows what each attempt and the license itself will run.