TN-LH Pass Rate 2026: What the Data Shows

Why There's No Single "TN-LH Pass Rate" Published

If you're searching for a specific pass rate percentage for the Tennessee Life & Health Insurance Producer Exam, you'll notice something quickly: the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance (TDCI) and Pearson VUE don't publish a running public pass/fail statistic the way some national certification bodies do. That doesn't mean the outcome is a mystery - it means the meaningful data lives in the exam's structure itself: how many questions you face, how scoring works, how retakes are penalized, and how the content is weighted across 13 domains.

This article walks through what is actually documented about the TN-LH exam so you can reason about your own odds instead of relying on invented numbers. For a broader orientation to the credential itself, see What Is TN-LH? or the deeper breakdown in TN-LH Certification.

How the Exam Is Scored and What Passing Requires

Life and Accident and Health are administered as separately scored exams. Each one contains 77 total questions, made up of 68 scored questions and 9 unscored pretest questions that are mixed in without being identified. You get 1 hour and 45 minutes per exam to work through the questions.

Because the 9 pretest questions aren't identified, every question has to be treated as if it counts - you can't guess which ones are "safe" to skip more carefully. This is one of the most important structural facts affecting outcomes: candidates who try to mentally triage questions by assumed difficulty are working against a format designed to prevent that.

To pass either exam, you need a scaled score of 70. Scaled scoring means the raw number of correct answers isn't the score you see - it's converted onto a standardized scale, so the passing threshold stays consistent across different test forms and pretest item mixes. For the exact mechanics of what a scaled 70 means in practice, see TN-LH Passing Score 2026: Exactly What You Need to Pass.

Domain Weighting: Where Candidates Gain or Lose Points

The exam outlines (effective October 15, 2025) split content into 13 domains spanning both the Life exam and the Accident and Health exam. Domain weights represent each topic's combined share of the 136 total scored questions across both exams. Knowing these weights is the single most useful piece of data for allocating study time, because it tells you exactly where the highest concentration of scored points sits.

Notice the pattern: four domains - Life Types of Policies, Life Riders/Provisions/Exclusions, A&H Types of Policies, and A&H Policy Provisions - each carry roughly 11% weight. Combined with the two "TN Laws Common" domains at 10.3% each, these six areas make up well over half of all scored questions. That's a critical planning insight: mastering policy types, provisions, riders, and the shared Tennessee law/rules content covers most of the exam's real estate.

For a domain-by-domain walkthrough of every content area with more granular subtopics, see TN-LH Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 13 Content Areas.

Retake Rules That Shape Attempt-Level Outcomes

The retake structure is one of the clearest pieces of quantitative "pass rate" data Tennessee does publish, and it has real consequences for how you should prepare. After a first failed attempt, candidates must wait 10 days before retesting. After any subsequent failure, the wait extends to 30 days. On top of that, candidates are limited to two OnVUE (remote online) attempts per exam line before they're required to test at a physical Pearson VUE test center.

This matters more than most candidates realize. A rushed first attempt that fails doesn't just cost the retest fee - it costs 10 to 30 days of momentum, and if you fail twice remotely, your options narrow to in-person testing. Treat the first attempt as the one that counts most.

Registration, Fees, and Format Choices That Affect Readiness

The Life exam and the Accident and Health exam are scored separately, and Pearson VUE offers a few ways to sit for them. A standard test-center appointment costs $55 per exam. If you're eligible and choose to take both Life and Accident and Health together via OnVUE, the combination costs $80 - a meaningful difference from paying for two separate $55 test-center sittings.

No prelicensing course is required for either line in Tennessee, which lowers the barrier to sitting for the exam but also means self-study quality is entirely on the candidate. Once you pass, the process isn't finished: you'll need fingerprinting, then a mandatory 48-hour wait before you can file your license application electronically, plus a $50 license application fee. Passing the exam and holding a license are two separate milestones - plan your timeline accordingly.

For a full breakdown of every fee across the process, see TN-LH Certification Cost 2026: Complete Pricing Breakdown, and for eligibility basics and the licensing sequence, see TN-LH Requirements 2026: Eligibility, Prerequisites & How to Qualify.

Who Sits for This Exam

Candidates pursuing the TN-LH exam are typically entering insurance sales and advisory roles - captive and independent agents, financial services professionals adding a life/health line, and career-changers moving into insurance distribution. Because Tennessee doesn't require a prelicensing course for these lines, candidates arrive with varying levels of preparation, from people with zero insurance background to those transferring licenses from other states or roles.

That variability is part of why a single national-style "pass rate" number wouldn't tell you much even if it were published - outcomes depend heavily on how deliberately someone studies the 13 domains rather than on any inherent difficulty ceiling. For a qualitative look at difficulty level and where candidates commonly struggle, read How Hard Is the TN-LH Exam? Complete Difficulty Guide 2026. For what the license leads to on the job market, see TN-LH Jobs and TN-LH Salary Guide 2026: Complete Earnings Analysis.

Turning the Data Into a Study Plan

Given the domain weights above, a sensible preparation sequence front-loads the heaviest domains and treats the low-weight "TN Laws Pertinent to [Line] Only" domains (2.9% each) as quick-reference material rather than deep-study targets.

This kind of sequencing - big domains first, niche domains as final review - is covered in more depth, including day-by-day pacing, in TN-LH Study Guide 2026: How to Pass on Your First Attempt. If you want a condensed reference to keep nearby during final review, TN-LH Cheat Sheet 2026: One-Page Review of Must-Know Facts distills the highest-yield facts.

Format at a Glance

Choosing between test-center and OnVUE delivery, and between single-exam or combined scheduling, affects both cost and your retake runway.

Once you've internalized how the fees, format, and retake rules interact, you can make a deliberate choice rather than defaulting to whichever slot is available soonest. If you're still deciding whether pursuing this license is worth the time and cost given your career goals, Is the TN-LH Certification Worth It? Complete ROI Analysis 2026 weighs that tradeoff directly.

You can also build familiarity with the exact question format - 77 questions per exam, mixed scored and pretest items, 1 hour 45 minutes - by working through full-length timed sets on the practice test platform before your appointment. Repeated exposure to the pacing demands of a 77-question, 105-minute session is one of the few "data points" you can generate yourself ahead of test day, and it's worth doing more than once through structured practice runs.

Frequently Asked Questions