Life insurance license — Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania dropped its pre-licensing education requirement. Act 142 of 2024 removed it for first-time applicants, and the Department's own licensing process page no longer mentions education at all — it goes straight from eligibility to the exam.

Most of the internet has not caught up. If a course provider tells you Pennsylvania requires 24 hours before you can sit, they are either quoting the old rule or confusing it with continuing education, which is also 24 hours with 3 in ethics. The numbers are identical, which is exactly why the two get mixed up.

That makes Pennsylvania one of the fastest large states to get licensed in.

The steps, in order

1. Study on your own schedule. No required hours. The exam has not got easier.
2. Pass the exam with PSI. The Life exam is 100 questions in two hours, 70% to pass. $45 a sitting, and retakes are unlimited at the same price.
3. Get fingerprinted at IdentoGO, using the Insurance Department service code 1KGBGJ. Write that code down — the enrolment site will not find the right record without it, and you pay at the centre after your prints are taken.
4. Apply. $55 for an individual resident producer.
5. Get appointed. The licence permits an appointment; the appointment is what lets you write.

What it costs

| Item | Cost | Paid to | | --- | --- | --- | | Exam | $45 per attempt | PSI | | Fingerprinting | Varies | IdentoGO | | Licence application | $55 | Pennsylvania Insurance Department | | Study course (optional) | $0–300 | Provider of your choice |

The $55 and the IdentoGO service code are first-party from the Department. Confirm the exam fee with PSI, and treat any course sold as "required" with suspicion.

After you're licensed

Twenty-four credits of continuing education across a two-year cycle, at least 3 of them ethics.

Note the shape of this state: nothing to do before the exam, a real obligation after it. Agents who license here because it is quick sometimes treat the CE the same way and find out at renewal that the hours have to be posted before the licence will renew.

Pennsylvania is a large, dense market and a common resident state for agents who then write non-resident across the north-east. Start those applications as soon as the resident licence issues.