Passing your South Carolina insurance license exam is a pivotal part of becoming a licensed insurance agent in the state of South Carolina.

In this guide, we’ll break down the general information that you need to know in order to pass your exam, outline the differences between each examination line, and offer tips on both: how to prepare for your South Carolina insurance licensing exam, and on what to do after you pass.

South Carolina Insurance Exam Basics

General Information

The state of South Carolina uses Pearson VUE to administer its insurance agent licensing. This means you can register and book all of your licensing examinations through the Pearson VUE website. Your test can be carried out online or in person.

Each major insurance line examination includes both general and state-specific material.

The general questions test your federal insurance product and agent knowledge, whereas the state-specific questions test you on the South Carolina insurance regulations and laws that you will need to know in order to operate as an insurance agent.

Score Explanation

As soon as you finish your insurance exam, you will see your score on screen. A score report will also be emailed to you.

If you failed your exam, your score report will include a diagnostic report which can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses for future exam attempts.

Note: You will need to obtain a score of 70% or higher in order to pass your insurance license exam(s) in South Carolina.

Cost

Your South Carolina insurance license exam cost will depend on the number of examinations that you take:

Examination	Cost	Time Allowed
Health & Life	$44	165 Minutes
General Lines	$44	160 Minutes
Life Insurance Producer	$44	120 Minutes
Personal Lines Insurance Producer	$44	120 Minutes

Note: You should focus on one exam at a time. This will likely increase the amount of time and effort you can allocate to each examination and should allow you to feel more prepared when you sit your exam.

South Carolina Life and Health Insurance Exam

Below you can find the content outline offered by Pearson VUE.

We recommend using it as a checklist when working through your pre-license education course. This way, you’ll be absolutely sure that you haven’t missed any topic that you will be tested on later on.

Health & Life (Including Annuities & Variable Contracts) Content Outline

150 scored questions, 15 pretest questions.

I. Types of Policies and Features

1. Traditional Life Policies and Features
2. Interest/market-sensitive/adjustable life products
3. Term life
4. Annuities
5. Combination plans and variation

II. Life Policy Riders, Provisions, Options, and Exclusions

1. Policy riders
2. Policy provisions and options
3. Policy exclusions

III. Completing the Life Application, Underwriting, and Delivering the Policies

1. Completing the application
2. Underwriting
3. Delivering the policy
4. Contract law

IV. Retirement, and Other Life Insurance Concepts

1. Third-party ownership
2. Life settlements
3. Group life insurance
4. Retirement plans
5. Life insurance needs analysis/suitability
6. social security benefits
7. Tax treatment of insurance premiums, proceeds, and dividends

V. Types of Health Policies

1. Disability Income
2. Accidental Death and Dismemberment
3. Medical Expense Insurance
4. Medicare Supplement Policies
5. Group Insurance
6. Individual/Group Long Term Care (LTC)
7. Other Policies

VI. Health Policy Provisions, Clauses, and Riders

1. Mandatory and optional provisions
2. Other provisions and clauses
3. Riders
4. Rights of renewability

VII. Social Insurance

1. Medicare (Parts A, B, C, D)
2. Medicaid
3. Social Security benefits

VIII. Other Health Insurance Concepts

1. Total, partial, recurrent, and residual disability
2. Owner’s rights
3. Dependent children benefits
4. Primary and contingent beneficiaries
5. Modes of premium payments
6. Nonduplication and coordination of benefits
7. Occupational vs. non-occupational
8. Tax treatment of premiums and proceeds of insurance contracts
9. Managed care
10. Workers compensation
11. Subrogation

IX. Field Underwriting Procedures

1. Completing the application
2. Explaining sources of insurability and HIPAA privacy information
3. Initial premium payment and receipt and consequences of the receipt
4. Submitting application to company for underwriting
5. Policy delivery
6. Explaining policy and its provisions, riders, exclusions, and ratings to clients
7. Replacement
8. Contract law

X. Florida Statutes, Rules, and Regulations

1. Agent responsibilities
2. Insurance guaranty fund
3. Marketing practices

XI. Florida Statutes, Rules, and Regulations Pertinent to Life and Annuity Insurance, Including Variable Contracts

1. Marketing methods and practices
2. Policy or contract replacement
3. Individual contracts
4. Group life

XII. Florida Statutes, Rules, and Regulations Pertinent to Health Insurance

1. Standard Policy Provisions and Clauses
2. Group Health Insurance
3. Disclosure
4. Medicare Supplement Insurance
5. Long-term care policies
6. Requirements for small employers
7. Florida Health Kids Corporation
8. Requirements relating to HIV/AIDS
9. Plan Types

South Carolina General Lines License Exam

Below you can find the content outline offered by Pearson VUE.

You should use this outline as a checklist when working through your pre-license education course in order to ensure that you haven’t missed any topic that you will be tested on later on.

General Lines Producer Content Outline

160 scorable questions, 15 pretest questions. 

I. Types of Property Policies 

1. Homeowners
2. Dwelling Policies
3. Commercial Lines
4. Inland Marine
5. National Flood Insurance Program
6. Others

II. Property Insurance Terms and Related Concepts

1. Concepts
2. Insurable interest
3. Risk
4. Hazard
5. Peril
6. Loss
7. Proximate cause
8. Deductible
9. Indemnity
10. Limits of liability
11. Insurance to value
12. Occurence
13. Cancellation
14. Nonrenewal
15. Vacancy and unoccupancy
16. Liability
17. Negligence
18. Binder
19. Endorsements
20. Blanket vs. Specific

III. Property Policy Provisions and Contract Law

1. Declarations
2. Insuring agreement
3. Conditions
4. Exclusions
5. Definition of the insured
6. Duties of the insured
7. Obligations of the insurance company
8. Notice of claim
9. Appraisal
10. Subrogation
11. Elements of a contract
12. Warranties, representations, and concealment
13. Sources of underwriting information
14. Fair Credit Reporting Act
15. Privacy Protection (Gramm Leach Billey)
16. Policy Application
17. Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA)
18. Territory

IV. Types of Casualty Policies, Bonds, and Related Terms

1. Commercial general liability
2. Automobile: Personal auto and Business auto
3. Workers’ compensation insurance, Employers liability insurance, and related issues
4. Crime
5. Bonds
6. Professional liability
7. Umbrella liability
8. Businessowners’ Policy (BOP)

V. Casualty Insurance Terms and Related Concepts

1. Risk
2. Hazards
3. Indemnity
4. Insurable interest
5. Loss valuation
6. Negligence
7. Liability
8. Occurence
9. Binders
10. Warranties
11. Representations
12. Concealment
13. Deposit Premium/Audit
14. Certificate of Insurance
15. Law of Large Numbers
16. Pure vs. speculative Risk
17. Endorsements
18. Damages

VI. Casualty Policy Provisions

1. Declarations
2. Insuring Agreement
3. Conditions
4. Exclusions and limitations
5. Definition of the insured
6. Duties of the insured after a loss
7. Cancellation and nonrenewal provisions
8. Supplementary payments
9. Proof of loss
10. Notice of a claim
11. Other insurance
12. Subrogation
13. Loss settlement provisions including consent to settle a loss
14. Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA)

Florida Statutes, Rules, and Regulations

VII. Florida Statutes, Rules, and Regulations Common to All Lines 

1. Financial Services Regulation
2. Department of Financial Services
3. Office of Insurance Regulation
4. Office of Financial Regulation
5. Definitions
6. Licensing
7. Agent responsibilities
8. Insurance guaranty fund
9. Marketing practices

VIII. Florida Statutes, Rules, and Regulations Pertinent to General Lines Insurance

1. Insurance Contracts
2. Payment of claims
3. Premium financing
4. Property
5. Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (Citizens)
6. Surplus Lines
7. Auto insurance
8. Comparative negligence law
9. Worker’s compensation
10. Florida automobile Joint Underwriting Association (FAJUA)
11. Boiler Machinery/equipment breakdown
12. Adjuster practices and conduct

IX. Florida Statutes, Rules, and Regulations Pertinent to Health Insurance

1. General health
2. Disclosure

How to Pass the South Carolina Insurance Exam

Passing your South Carolina insurance exam ultimately comes down to your mindset and degree of preparation.

We have composed a few helpful exam tips and tricks that should help you perform as well as you can during your exam day.

Get a Pre-License Course

Even though this is not a requirement in the state of South Carolina, getting a pre-license course can be incredibly beneficial. These courses can help you get accustomed to the extensive amount of content that you will have to memorize.

We recommend Kaplan’s course because it offers a variety of helpful features, including:

• Online exam simulations
• Live online training
• Printable study guides
• End of chapter reviews

Make Enough Time to Study

Not leaving enough time to prepare is one of the easiest ways to ensure that you do not pass your exam on your first attempt.

Remember, there are zero questions on your exam that are based on common sense or critical thinking. All questions are purely factual, and so will relate to how well you understand and remember the content that you have learned.

We recommend allocating around one to two weeks to prepare for your exam, as this should allow you to go through all of the material at least twice.

Control Test Anxiety

Even though you cannot control whether you get exam anxiety or not, you can take a few steps when preparing to limit its effect on your performance:

• Establish a consistent pretest routine — Acclimate yourself to exam conditions by following a specific routine on each practice exam at home. This should help you feel less anxious during your exam day.
• Get plenty of sleep — Lack of sleep can exacerbate your anxiety and increase your self-doubt. Make sure you are consistently getting a good night’s sleep in the week leading up to your exam.
• Study effectively — This sounds obvious, but make sure you are actually tailoring your studying to the exam that you are taking. Remember, there are no critical thinking or common sense questions involved.
• Arrive early — If you are planning to sit your exam in person, we recommend you arrive at least 30 minutes before it’s due to start in order to get used to your surroundings and have time to check in with your center’s administrator.

Getting Your South Carolina Insurance License

Your next steps will depend on whether you actually passed your exam, as well as on whether you plan to get licensed for any additional lines.

You can apply for your license up to 12 months after you complete your exam, so if you would like to attempt passing additional insurance line exams before filing your licensing application, you are totally free to do that.

After you have passed your insurance licensing exam, you will need to:

• Complete a fingerprint and background check
• File your licensing application
• Wait for your application to be reviewed

South Carolina Department of Insurance Contact Information

Mailing Address:

1201 Main Street, Suite 1000
Columbia, SC 29201

Phone: (803) 737-6160

Fax: (803) 737-6231

Email: agentmail@doi.sc.gov

Website: http://www.doi.sc.gov/

License Search: South Carolina Insurance License Search and Lookup