Not a single hour. The Texas Department of Insurance asks that you be 18, pass the state exam, file an application with a 50 dollar fee and clear a fingerprint background check. No required hours, no approved provider, no certificate to turn in.
Which sounds like good news until you look at the pass rate. The exam is the only gate, and half the people who sit for it do not get through.
What Texas requires
Be at least 18 years old
There is no education requirement, no degree, no minimum experience. Age and a clean record are the only personal criteria.
Pass the state exam
General Lines Life, Accident and Health: 130 scored questions in 150 minutes, administered by Pearson VUE. Scaled score of 70 to pass. This is the only real gate.
Submit your application
Filed with the Texas Department of Insurance with a 50 dollar fee per license type, not refundable and not transferable. You have 12 months from passing the exam, or you take it again.
Complete fingerprinting
Through IdentoGO for the background check. Schedule it around the same time as the exam so it is not what holds up your license.
The one exception: the temporary license
If an insurer or agency sponsors you, Texas can issue a temporary license good for 180 days so you can work before passing the exam. That path does carry a training requirement: 40 hours provided by your sponsor, within 30 days of applying. Note where that obligation comes from. It is the sponsorship, not the license. You still have to pass the exam inside the 180 days, and the state caps how many temporary licenses a company can sponsor per year.
What it costs
Exam fee (General Lines Life, Accident and Health)
$49
License application, per license type
$50
Fingerprinting through IdentoGO
about $41
Prelicensing course
$0, not required
One number that does not show up on any list: candidates averaged 1.62 attempts each in 2025, which works out to roughly 79 dollars in exam fees per person rather than 49. Failing is the expensive part, and it is the part nobody budgets for.
The part that matters
In 2025, 42,566 people sat for this exam. 57 percent passed on the first attempt. 50 percent passed overall. And people coming back for a second try passed at only 40 percent, which is worse than people who had never seen it.
That last number is the one worth sitting with. If effort were the missing ingredient, repeat takers would do better, not worse. They had already seen the format and they had studied more. Something other than effort is deciding this, and it is knowing which of the thirteen sections is actually costing you points.
If you already failed once, start here →No. The Texas Department of Insurance does not require prelicensing education for a Life and Health license. The published requirements are age, passing the state exam, the application with its 50 dollar fee, and fingerprinting. There is no required number of hours, no state approved provider you must use, and no certificate of completion to submit.
One. If you take the temporary license route, where an insurer or agency sponsors you so you can work for up to 180 days before passing the exam, you must complete 40 hours of training provided by that sponsor within 30 days of applying. That training obligation comes from the sponsorship, not from the license itself. You still have to pass the exam inside the 180 days.
Because it is what the market sells and what recruiters hand out. Courses are the incumbent product, so the whole category is priced and marketed as if the course were the requirement. It is not. What the state measures is whether you can pass 130 questions.
No, and that is the actual problem. In 2025, 42,566 people sat for the Texas General Lines Life, Accident and Health exam. 57 percent passed on the first attempt and 50 percent passed overall. People coming back for a second attempt passed at only 40 percent, worse than first timers. No course is required, but passing is far from automatic.
That depends entirely on you, since no clock is imposed by a course. Motivated candidates schedule the exam within a few weeks. Once you pass, you submit the application and the license typically issues after the background check clears.
Licensing requirements from the Texas Department of Insurance and the Texas Insurance Licensing Candidate Handbook, Pearson VUE publication 124400. Pass rates from examination pass rates published by Pearson VUE for the Texas Department of Insurance, January to December 2025. Fingerprinting cost is an estimate; the state does not publish it. Updated Aug 2026.
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