United States
Hong KongThe 100/30 split, and what it should do to your study plan
130 scored questions split 100 general and 30 Texas. The general portion is 77% of the paper, which is our arithmetic, and it is the half most candidates under-prepare. Both portions are sat in one session and reported as a single scaled score, so neither can be passed on its own.
Ask a candidate what the Texas life and health exam is about and most will say Texas insurance law. It is the state name in the title, so that is a reasonable guess. It is also wrong by a factor of three.
The split
| Portion | Scored questions | Share of the paper | Outline sections |
|---|---|---|---|
| General insurance principles | 100 | 77% | 9 |
| Texas statutes and rules | 30 | The remaining 30 questions | 4 |
77 percent is ours, from dividing 100 by 130. Pearson publishes the two question counts and leaves the reader to do that division, which almost nobody does, and the whole argument on this page turns on it.
What is in each half
The general portion is insurance itself. Types of life policy, riders and provisions, applications and underwriting, retirement concepts, types of accident and health policy, health policy provisions, social insurance, and field underwriting. It is the material any producer in any state has to know.
The Texas portion is four sections: statutes common to life and health, statutes for life only, statutes for accident and health only, and health maintenance organizations. Fourteen questions, six, seven and three. Those counts are Pearson's own.
| Texas outline section | Questions |
|---|---|
| Statutes and rules common to life and health insurance | 14 |
| Statutes and rules pertinent to life insurance only | 6 |
| Statutes and rules pertinent to accident and health insurance only | 7 |
| Statutes and rules pertinent to health maintenance organizations | 3 |
Look at the last row. Texas HMO regulation, an entire regulatory framework with its own chapter of the Insurance Code, is three questions. Three. Learning it to the depth some study manuals go to is a poor use of an evening.
One score, not two
The portions are published separately and scored together. Pearson reports one scaled result covering all 130 scored questions, and there is no line on your score report saying you cleared one half and missed the other.
Two consequences worth holding onto. A strong general performance can absorb a shaky Texas one, because 100 questions outvote 30. And a failure is total: you resit the whole paper, both portions, at the full fee.
How candidates actually misallocate
The Texas portion feels examinable in a way the general portion does not. It is specific, it is local, it has section numbers attached to it, and it looks like the thing you could be caught out on. So people front-load it.
Meanwhile the general portion is full of material that feels like it will come naturally because it is conceptual. Nonforfeiture options. Dividend options. Settlement options. Three lists of things beginning with the same word, each about six items long, each with a near-neighbor in the other two lists. That is where a paper gets lost, and it is 100 questions deep.
Our opinion: if you are splitting your revision time in half between the two portions, you have it backwards, and the ratio of the questions should be somewhere near the ratio of the hours.
A defensible way to divide the time
- Weight your first pass roughly to the question counts, so about three quarters of the hours on the general portion
- Front-load the two biggest general sections, types of accident and health policy at 16 questions and the two 15-question life sections
- Give the Texas portion a concentrated late block rather than a thin daily trickle, because statute decays fast and is cheap to reload
- Spend nothing on Texas HMO regulation beyond a single pass; it is three questions
That fourth item is the one people argue with. Three questions out of 130 is under two and a half percent of the paper, and the depth needed to move from a decent guess to certainty on all three is measured in hours.
The general portion travels and the Texas portion does not
If you ever license in a second state, the 100 general questions are the part you keep. Every state's producer exam is built on the same insurance principles, with a state supplement bolted on. Texas statute is the part you would replace.
That is not an argument for neglecting Texas law, which is 30 marks in front of you now. It is an argument against treating those 30 marks as the point of the exercise. The durable asset is the 100.
Where our numbers stop
The per-section question counts above are published by Pearson. What is not published is how the questions inside a section distribute across its lettered sub-items, so nobody can tell you how many of the 14 common-statute questions are about the Commissioner rather than about unfair trade practices. Any page that does is estimating, and it should say so.
We hold 47 chapters of the Texas Insurance Code in full, which is why our own Texas questions can cite the section an answer turns on. We do not hold Title 28 of the Administrative Code, which the outline also cites, and we are not going to write as though we do.
Common questions
How much of the Texas insurance exam is Texas law?
30 of the 130 scored questions, across four outline sections. The other 100 are general insurance principles, which works out at 77 percent of the paper on our arithmetic from Pearson's published counts.
Are the general and Texas portions scored separately?
No. They are published as separate outlines and sat in one session, and Pearson reports a single scaled score for all 130 scored questions. Neither portion can be passed or carried forward on its own.
How many questions are on Texas HMO regulation?
Three, which Pearson publishes as the count for that outline section. It is the smallest section on the paper and it does not repay deep study relative to the 16-question section on types of accident and health policy.
Should I study Texas statute first or last?
Late, in a concentrated block. Statute is memorization rather than reasoning, so it decays quickly and reloads fast, which makes a late block the efficient shape for it. The general portion is 100 of the 130 scored questions and it is what needs the sustained time.
Does a strong Texas score make up for a weak general score?
Partly, since it is one combined result, but the math is against you. 100 general questions outweigh 30 Texas ones, so a candidate who is strong only on statute is relying on a third of the paper to carry the rest.