United States
Hong KongIs the life and health exam harder than property and casualty?
Barely. TDI's FY2025 figures put General Lines - Life, Accident and Health at 57.7 percent first-time pass and General Lines - Property and Casualty at 58.3 percent. A gap of well under a point is not a difficulty difference worth choosing a career on.
People ask this expecting a clear winner. TDI publishes the numbers and they say the two are close enough to call a tie.
The published pass rates
| Texas examination | First-time candidates | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| General Lines - Property and Casualty | 10,887 | 58.3% |
| General Lines - Life, Accident and Health | 26,427 | 57.7% |
| Personal Lines Property and Casualty | 5,223 | 66% |
| Limited Lines | 1,995 | 68.8% |
| Life Agent | 21,186 | 46.7% |
| Property and Casualty Risk Manager | 105 | 32.4% |
The two General Lines exams sit within a point of each other. Whatever is different about the material, it is not showing up as a difficulty gap in the results.
The real answer to "which is harder"
Life Agent, and nobody expects that. It is the narrower license, it covers less ground than General Lines - Life, Accident and Health, and its first-time pass rate is eleven points lower at 46.7 percent.
That is the most interesting row in TDI's report and we have not seen anybody else point at it. Why a narrower exam produces a lower pass rate is not something the report explains, and we are not going to invent a reason. What the number does support is the practical advice: check which license you actually need before you book, because the names are close and the outcomes are not.
How the two General Lines exams differ in shape
Life and health is about contracts and provisions: what a policy promises, when it pays, what a rider changes and what an exclusion removes. It is dense terminology in near-synonym pairs.
Property and casualty is a different body of material with its own structure, and it is another writer's cluster on this site rather than ours. What we can say is that both are Texas exams administered by Pearson VUE for TDI, both have a general portion and a Texas portion, and neither publishes a percentage pass mark.
The choice is not really about difficulty
A difference of well under a percentage point in pass rate is noise next to what you want to sell for the next decade. Choose the license that matches the work, and treat the exams as equally passable, because on the published evidence they are.
The concession: pass rates measure candidate populations, not papers. The people sitting property and casualty may differ from the people sitting life and health in ways nobody publishes, and a similar pass rate on two different populations is weaker evidence of similar difficulty than it looks.
Common questions
Is the Texas life and health exam harder than property and casualty?
Barely. TDI's FY2025 report puts General Lines - Life, Accident and Health at 57.7 percent first-time pass and General Lines - Property and Casualty at 58.3 percent, which is a gap of well under a point.
Which Texas insurance exam is hardest?
Of the large ones, Life Agent, at 46.7 percent first time. Property and Casualty Risk Manager is lower still at 32.4 percent, but only 105 people sat it, so it is a small and unusual population.
Why is the narrower Life Agent exam harder?
TDI's report publishes the pass rates and not the reasons, so we do not have an explanation and are not going to guess at one. What the figures do show is that a narrower license is not automatically an easier exam.
Should pass rates decide which license you get?
No. Under a point of difference is noise next to the question of what you want to sell, and pass rates measure candidate populations as much as papers. Choose the license that matches the work.