The state insurance exam consists of various concepts that educate individuals on the insurance industry and how insurance products work so that they may properly advise clients when selling insurance. Topics covered on the exam include basic and advanced insurance concepts and principles, an overview of the insurance industry, agent responsibilities, and state insurance laws and regulations.
While each concept is important to understand in order to pass the insurance exam, some concepts will be more heavily questioned on the exam than others.
In preparing for the insurance exam, every state provides an ‘Examination Content Outline’ which lists the number of questions on the exam, the time limit in which the exam must be completed and the insurance concepts and topics tested on during the exam.
The Exam Content Outline also illustrates the percentage, or number of questions, of each section of the exam. For example, questions about Social Security might only total 2% of the insurance exam, while questions regarding state-specific laws and regulations may total 10% of the exam. This is significant because it acknowledges the sections of the outline that contain more questions, allowing you to streamline your insurance exam preparation in a more efficient manner.
Let’s review a few exam outlines to see how the process works:
Number of questions per section
In this example we are reviewing the Georgia Examination Content Outline which shows how many questions are on the insurance exam for a specific section. As you will notice, Section I – Types of Policies – has a total of 13 questions on the state exam. Section II – Policy Riders, Provisions, Options, and Exclusions – has a total of 29 questions on the state exam. While concepts and topics listed in each section are important to understand in preparing for the insurance exam, Section II has twice as many questions than Section I, which implies it requires twice the amount of study time.
Importance of a section based on percentage
In this example, we are reviewing the Pennsylvania Examination Content Outline which shows the importance of a specific section based on its percentage of coverage on the state exam. This outline shows that Section 6 – Annuities, which totals 22% of the exam, has 7 times as many questions as Section 8 – Qualified Plans, which only accounts for 3% of the total number of questions on the exam.
National Online Insurance School helps streamline the process of preparing for your insurance exam by including a feature we call Pass Report, which displays both the amount of time you study in each lesson, as well as the amount of time we suggest studying to fully comprehend the concepts taught within each lesson. The suggested time listed for each lesson is relative to the respective section found on the Examination Content Outline, taking the guesswork out of the correct amount of time you should be studying.
You may view your state’s Exam Content Outline at our Insurance Exam Requirements page.
