How to Pass the Alabama Life and Health Insurance Exam on the First Try (2026)

Alabama gives you a choice most states do not: you can sit a single combined Life and Health exam, or you can sit the Life and Health lines as two separate exams. All three are administered by the University of Alabama's Continuing Education Lifelong Learning program (CELL), a state-university testing program under contract to the Alabama Department of Insurance (ALDOI), not a national testing vendor.

Item	Combined Life & Health	Life only	Health only
Questions	150	125	100
Time limit	180 minutes	150 minutes	120 minutes
Minimum correct to pass	105	87	70
Fee	$75	$50	$50

All three passing marks work out to a flat 70 percent raw score, not a scaled score. There is no equating formula sitting between your right answers and your result the way there is on some other states' exams; you need 105 of 150, 87 of 125, or 70 of 100 correct, and that is the whole calculation. Each question has four answer options.

You can test at a physical center in Birmingham, Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, or Tuscaloosa, or you can test remotely with proctoring from your own desktop or laptop (Chromebooks are not accepted for remote testing). Either way, you must register at least 7 days in advance, and the registration fee is paid again for every attempt and is never refunded, whether you fail, pass, or register for the wrong exam by mistake.

ALDOI's own Producer Examination Content Outline for Life and Health breaks every version of the exam into the same four parts, with a different question count for each exam option.

Part	Combined L&H	Life only	Health only
I. General, Life and Health Insurance	30	27	21
II. Life Insurance	55	80	0
III. Health Insurance	45	0	63
IV. Alabama Insurance Law	20	18	16
Total	150	125	100

On the combined exam, Part II (Life) and Part III (Health) together are two-thirds of your score, 100 of 150 questions, split between traditional and flexible life policies, policy provisions and riders, annuities and retirement plans, business and group life, Social Security, health foundations, medical expense, disability income, group health, Medicare and Medicaid, and limited health policies. Part IV, Alabama Insurance Law, is only 20 of 150 questions on the combined exam, but it is the part candidates most often shortchange, and it is dense: licensing and continuing education, producer appointment and termination, unfair trade practices, policy approval and required provisions, advertising and disclosure rules, life and annuity replacement, annuity suitability, and the state's own guaranty association, plus a separate sub-section for Health candidates covering individual health policies, HMOs, Medicare Supplement, and long-term care.

If you are taking a single-line exam instead of the combined one, notice that Part I shrinks (27 or 21 questions instead of 30) and Part IV shrinks too (18 or 16 instead of 20), while the line you are testing on grows to fill the rest: Life alone is 80 of 125 questions, Health alone is 63 of 100. Whichever path you choose, the Alabama law section never disappears and never drops below roughly 16 percent of the exam.

Since January 1, 2024, Alabama has not required a pre-licensing course for either the Life or the Health line of authority. The repeal came from Act 2023-104 (House Bill 60, 2023 Regular Session), which struck the old requirement of 20 classroom hours per line of authority out of the Alabama Code and left the path to the exam open to anyone who is at least 18 and has no disqualifying act on record. There is no classroom-hour count, no completion certificate, and no grandfather clause still quietly requiring one; the repeal is total.

That means your study time is entirely your own to allocate, and it is also entirely on you to cover the outline above without a classroom making sure you touch every part. A course built directly from ALDOI's own outline, rather than a general life-and-health text, is the fastest way to replace what the classroom used to guarantee.

Alabama's retake rule is not a simple fixed wait; it changes depending on how many times you have failed.

Failure	Wait before next attempt
1st	None
2nd	90 days
3rd	None (once the 90-day clock from the 2nd failure has already run)
4th and beyond	180 days

All of these counters reset if 24 months pass since your last failure. There is also a cross-exam rule worth knowing before you pick a path: failing the Life exam carries its waiting period over to the combined exam, but not to the standalone Health exam; failing Health carries over to the combined exam, but not to standalone Life; and failing the combined exam itself carries the waiting period over to both the standalone Life and standalone Health exams. If you are weighing whether to take the combined exam or the two single-line exams, that last point is the one to sit with: a single bad day on the combined exam can put both single-line paths on hold too.

The LanePrep Alabama Life and Health course is nine audio chapters, built directly from the combined exam's outline above, each with its own quiz.

Week 1, General and Life Fundamentals (Chapters 1-4, covers all 30 of Part I plus the start of Part II)

• Days 1-2: Chapter 1, Purpose of Insurance and Contract Law (free)
• Days 3-4: Chapter 2, Underwriting and the Application
• Days 5-6: Chapter 3, Life Insurance Policies: Traditional and Flexible
• Day 7: Chapter 4, Life Policy Provisions, Options and Riders

Week 2, Life and Health, the two-thirds of your score (Chapters 5-7)

• Days 8-9: Chapter 5, Annuities, Retirement Plans, Business and Group Life, Social Security
• Days 10-12: Chapter 6, Health Insurance Foundations, Medical Expense and Disability Income (23 questions on the combined exam, the single largest chapter)
• Days 13-14: Chapter 7, Individual Health Policy Provisions, Group Health, Medicare, Medicaid and Limited Policies

Week 3, Alabama Law and Exam Day (Chapters 8-9)

• Days 15-17: Chapter 8, Alabama Insurance Law (20 questions, and the part most candidates under-study; give it the full three days)
• Day 18: Chapter 9, Exam Day: University of Alabama Testing, Scoring and Strategy, then a timed run through every chapter quiz in one sitting
• Days 19-20: Re-drill the questions you missed, re-listen to your weakest chapter, and rest the day before your exam

Take the chapter quiz right after each listen and write down which questions you missed. Two days later, before starting the next chapter, answer those same questions again cold. If you are testing on a single line instead of the combined exam, drop the chapters for the other line and lean harder into Chapters 1, 2, 8, and 9, since the general and Alabama-law material appears on every version of the exam. Chapters 1 and 9 are free at /al/l-and-h/preview, full audio and the chapter quiz, no signup.

Treating Alabama law as an afterthought. It is only 20 of 150 questions on the combined exam, which makes it easy to leave for a last-minute skim. But it covers some of the densest material on the whole test, licensing rules, appointment and termination, replacement, suitability, and the state's own guaranty association, and it never drops below roughly a sixth of any version of the exam. Give Chapter 8 the full three days in the plan above, not a single evening.

Confusing the 30-day replacement refund with an ordinary free look. Alabama Insurance Regulation 482-1-133 gives a policyholder who replaces a life insurance policy or annuity the right to return it within 30 days of delivery and receive a full, unconditional refund of every premium or charge paid on it. That is a specific replacement rule, triggered when one policy replaces another, and it is broader than a routine free-look provision on a policy that was not replacing anything. Treating the two as the same rule, or assuming the 30-day figure applies to every new policy, is a common and costly mix-up on the Alabama law section.

Calling the guaranty association by the wrong name. Alabama's is the Alabama Life and Disability Insurance Guaranty Association, established under Code of Alabama Title 27, Chapter 44, not a generic "Life and Health Guaranty Association" borrowed from how other states name theirs. The exam outline uses the full, exact name, and so should you.

Assuming the license is priced per line of authority. Some states charge a separate fee for every line you add. Alabama does not: the producer license fee is one flat $80 charge that covers every line you apply for in the same initial application, whether that is Life, Health, or both. The catch is the phrase "in the same initial application." Adding a line later means filing an entirely new application with its own fees, so decide which lines you want before you apply, not after.

Once you pass, your examination certificate is valid for one year from the date you completed it. File your license application before that year is up, or the exam no longer counts and you will need to retake it.

Fingerprinting is handled through Fieldprint, Alabama's sole authorized vendor, and the results are only valid for 30 days, a much shorter window than your one-year exam certificate. Get fingerprinted after you pass, not before, so the 30-day clock does not run out while you are still finishing your application. You will also need to submit proof of citizenship as part of the application; ALDOI accepts several forms of documentation for this, including a driver's license.

The license itself is a single flat $80 fee covering every line of authority you apply for together, with a $70 biennial renewal. Once licensed, Alabama requires 24 hours of continuing education every two years, including 3 hours of ethics, with no carryover of unused hours from one period to the next. For the full fee breakdown, including fingerprinting, appointment fees, and what a retake adds to the total, see how much an Alabama Life and Health license costs.

Exam structure, fees, and the content outline come from ALDOI's own Producer Requirements, Licensing and Renewal Fees, Fingerprinting, and Limitations on Repeat Examinations pages, the University of Alabama CELL insurance-testing program's own candidate information, Insurance Regulation Chapters 482-1-110 and 482-1-133, and Act 2023-104. Read October 2026.