Study to the weights, not to the textbook. Florida statutes and rules are 33% of the exam across three areas. Life concepts are another 33%, health concepts 29%, field underwriting 5%. Work them in that order of value and the 70% pass mark stops being tight.
The twelve content areas, with their weights
Taken from the state’s published examination content outline. The percentages are the share of the 150 scored questions.
| Content area | Weight |
|---|---|
| Florida statutes, rules and regulations common to all lines | 13% |
| Types of health policies | 11% |
| Types of life policies and features | 10% |
| Life policy riders, provisions, options and exclusions | 10% |
| Health policy provisions, clauses and riders | 10% |
| Florida statutes for life and annuity, including variable products | 10% |
| Florida statutes for health insurance | 10% |
| Completing the life application, underwriting and delivery | 8% |
| Retirement and other life insurance concepts | 5% |
| Field underwriting procedures | 5% |
| Social insurance | 4% |
| Other health insurance concepts | 4% |
Read the top line again. The single largest area on the exam is not a life or health topic — it is Florida law common to all lines, and it is bigger than any product area.
Where to spend your time
Florida law — 33%, and the reason most candidates fail
Three areas. The first covers the Department of Financial Services and the Chief Financial Officer, licensing and appointments, the agent’s fiduciary duties, the guaranty association, and the unfair trade practices — sliding, coercion, misrepresentation, defamation, twisting, churning, rebating, controlled business. Those last ones are where the exam is deliberately fine-grained: twisting and churning are near neighbors and the distinction is testable.
The second and third cover the same idea for products: marketing and disclosure rules for life and annuity including variable products, replacement duties, suitability; and for health, the standard provisions, group and small-employer rules, continuation and conversion, Medicare supplement regulation, long-term care.
If you study one thing properly, study this. National material does not cover it, and it is a third of the paper.
Life concepts — 33%
Policy types and features (whole, term, universal, variable, indexed), riders and provisions, the application and underwriting process through to delivery, and the retirement and tax concepts. Most of it is standard life-and-health curriculum and most candidates arrive competent here.
Health concepts — 29%
Policy types (disability income, medical expense, HMO and PPO structures, Medicare supplement, long-term care, group), the provisions and riders, social insurance — Medicare Parts A through D, Medicaid, Social Security disability — and the residual concepts like coordination of benefits and total disability definitions.
Field underwriting — 5%
Small, and easy to score on: what the agent does at the point of sale, the conditional receipt, the statement of continued good health, replacement duties, and what an agent may not do — a producer cannot change or waive a provision of the contract.
How to work through it
- Diagnose first. Take practice questions by area before revising anything. Most people discover they are fine on life concepts and thin on Florida law, which reorders the whole plan.
- Work the three law areas until they are boring. They are 33% and they are memorization, not reasoning — which means they are reliably winnable.
- Read explanations on correct answers too. On a four-option question a guess is right a quarter of the time, and a lucky guess looks exactly like knowledge in your score.
- Then practice against the clock. 150 questions in 165 minutes is about 66 seconds each, and pacing beats a lot of otherwise well-prepared candidates.
What the exam looks like
150 scored questions plus 15 unidentified pretest questions, 2 hours 45 minutes, 70% to pass — correct answers divided by total questions. You sit it at a physical Pearson VUE test center for $44 and leave with a photo-bearing score report showing a numeric score and a breakdown by content area. That breakdown is the best study plan you will ever get if the news is bad; see retaking the exam.
Find your weak areas first
340 questions, filterable by content area, every answer explained. First 5 free — no account, no card.