Life and Health Insurance License Exam Cram [Paperback]

Bisys Educational Services (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 13, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0789732602 | ISBN-13: 978-0789732606

If you are studying for your life and health insurance licensing exam, we have the ultimate study tool for you. Life and Health Insurance License Exam Cram is a great resource to help you learn the concepts, laws, rate calculations and state and federal regulations that will be covered on the exam. You'll also receive a CD that includes a fully-customizable test engine, detailed score report and state-specific law supplement. No matter where you are taking your exam or which area you need to focus on during your studying, Life and Health Insurance License Exam Cram is your smartest way to get certified.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Author Bio

About BISYS

The BISYS Group, Inc. (NYSE: BSG), headquartered in New York City, provides solutions that enable insurance companies, investment firms, and banks to expand their businesses and run their operations more profitably. BISYS currently supports more than 22,000 domestic and international financial institutions and corporate clients through several business units.

BISYS Education Services is the nation's premier provider of licensing preparation, continuing education, and professional development courses for life, health, long-term care, annuity, and property-casualty insurance products as well as investments. This unit complements its education services with a comprehensive compliance management solution that supports insurance and investment firms and professionals with a sophisticated suite of services that automate the entire licensing process.

BISYS Insurance Services is the nation's largest independent distributor of life insurance and provider of support services required to sell traditional and variable life and annuity products as well as long-term care and disability insurance. This unit is also the nation's second largest independent wholesale distributor of commercial property/casualty insurance.

BISYS Investment Services group provides administration and distribution services for approximately 380 clients, representing more than 2,200 mutual funds, hedge funds, private equity funds, and other alternative investment products, with approximately $750 billion in assets under administration. It also provides retirement services to more than 18,000 companies in partnership with 40 of the nation's leading banks and investment management companies and offers analytical research and competitive information through its Financial Research Corporation (FRC) subsidiary.

BISYS' Information Services group supports approximately 1,450 banks, insurance companies, and corporations with industry-leading information processing and imaging solutions, turnkey asset retention solutions, and specialized corporate banking solutions. Additional information is available at http://www.bisys.com.

Eric Alan Anderson is Director of Insurance Education for BISYS Education Services, based in Indianapolis, Indiana. He has almost 25 years of experience creating training and test preparation materials for the financial services industry. In addition to authoring 17 insurance training texts and editing 8 others, he has written newsletters and magazine articles and has developed materials for audio cassette/workbook, videotape, computer disk, and the Web. He has also taught basic English skills courses at the college level and has made presentations to national conferences of insurance associations.

Matt McClure is Editor of Life/Health Products for BISYS Education Services. He maintains 42 titles on BISYS Education Services' course list, including the Life/Health Concepts license preparation text and its supplementary review materials. Formerly a freelance writer and editor, his work has appeared in numerous nationally published books and magazines. He is a licensed life and health insurance producer.

Richard A. Morin, CIC, is a contract author based in Los Angeles, California. He has 35 years of experience writing and training on a broad range of subjects for the financial services industry. For several years he was an editor for a major insurance training publisher, and he has also worked as an insurance underwriter, a rating supervisor, and a licensed insurance and mutual fund sales representative.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Welcome to Life and Health Insurance Licensing Exam Cram 2! Whether this is your first or your fifteenth Exam Cram 2 series book, you'll find information here that will help ensure your success as you pursue knowledge, experience, and certification. This introduction explains state insurance licensing programs in general and talks about how the Exam Cram 2 series can help you prepare for your state insurance licensing exam. Chapters 1 through 19 are designed to remind you of everything you need to know in order to take—and pass—your state insurance licensing exam. The two sample tests at the end of the book should give you a reasonably accurate assessment of your knowledge—and, yes, we provide the answers and their explanations to the tests. Read the book and understand the material, and you stand a very good chance of passing the test.

Exam Cram 2 books help you understand and appreciate the subjects and materials you need to pass state insurance licensing exams. Exam Cram 2 books are aimed strictly at test preparation and review. They do not teach you everything you need to know to pass the exam. Instead, we present and dissect the questions and problems I've found that you're likely to encounter on a test. I've worked to bring together as much information as possible about state insurance licensing exams.

Nevertheless, to completely prepare yourself for any state insurance licensing test, we recommend that you begin by taking the Self-Assessment that is included in this book, immediately following this introduction. The Self-Assessment tool will help you evaluate your knowledge base against the requirements for a state insurance licensing exam under both ideal and real circumstances.

Based on what you learn from the Self-Assessment, you might decide to begin your studies with some more comprehensive self-study or classroom training, some practice with state insurance exam simulators, or an audio review program. On the other hand, you might decide to pick up and read one of the many study guides available from third-party vendors on certain topics. We also recommend that you supplement your study program with a visit to your state insurance department's website to get all the details about how to get your insurance license as well as how to schedule and take your insurance licensing exam.

Getting an Insurance License

Licensing is the way governments assure that only qualified individuals are allowed to practice certain important professions, such as being an insurance producer. Because insurance is regulated primarily at the state level, the rules for getting an insurance license vary somewhat from state to state.

Every state requires individuals to pass a qualification exam to get an insurance license. In addition, most states require individuals to meet a prelicensing education requirement before they can take the qualification exam. In some states, the prelicensing education requirement can be met through an approved self-study course—that is, you buy a book that has been approved in advance by the state insurance department and take an exam (not to be confused with the licensing qualification exam) that you send in to be graded. In other states, the prelicensing education requirement can be met only by attending an approved classroom course.

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Note - This Exam Cram text is not approved to meet the prelicensing education requirement in any state. It is designed only as a supplementary aid to help you pass the state insurance licensing exam.

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Besides fulfilling any prelicensing education requirement and passing the licensing exam, insurance license candidates must also submit a license application to their state insurance department and have it approved. In some states, the license application must be submitted before taking the license qualification exam; in some states, it must be submitted after passing the exam. Call your state insurance department's licensing division or visit its website to find out what you need to do in your state.

Taking a Licensing Exam

As with other aspects of insurance licensing, specific instructions on how to register for your qualification exam are available from the insurance department. Ask for a licensing information bulletin or a licensing candidate handbook, which will describe where and when exams are given, the fees you must pay, and the testing procedures.

One thing all state insurance qualification exams have in common is that they are closed-book exams. You will not be allowed to take any study materials or notes into the testing room. Even phones and calculators might not be allowed. In some states, the only items exam candidates are permitted to take into the testing room are their wallet and keys.

In most states, insurance qualification exams are given on computers. However, you will not need any computer or typing skills to take the exam. You will be instructed on how to answer questions and given a short practice test to get comfortable with the equipment before the actual qualification exam begins.

When you complete a computer-administered exam, the software tells you immediately whether you passed or failed. Your states will have its own rules for retesting in the event you don't pass. Those rules will be described in your licensing information bulletin/candidate handbook.

How to Prepare for an Exam

Whether or not your state has a prelicensing education requirement, you'll want to study in preparation for the license qualification exam. And even if your state has a prelicensing education requirement, you'll probably want to do some additional studying to make sure you are fully prepared for the exam. Your options for additional study include the following:

• Self-study courses—Publishers such as BISYS Education Services offer courses designed to allow you to study on your own for the licensing qualification exam. BISYS license training packages are available in either web-based or print-based formats and contain a number of components:

  • A Property-Casualty Concepts text, which covers all the non–state-specific topics on the licensing exam

  • Practice exams, which help you evaluate your comprehension of the material in the Concepts text

  • Explanations to answers on the practice exams, so you know why each of your responses was right or wrong

  • A state insurance law digest, which covers all the state-specific topics on the licensing exam

  • An optional audio CD review program, which reviews the key information contained in the Concepts text

  • An optional exam simulator, which gives you additional question-and-answer practice over the material covered in the Concepts text and the state insurance law digest

• Classroom training—Many colleges and commercial training companies offer classroom training for insurance license exams. Although classroom training generally costs considerably more than self-study, some individuals find that they learn best in a classroom situation. And of course, in many states, the prelicensing education requirement must be met with classroom study in any case.

• Other sources—There's no shortage of materials available on insurance topics. The "Need to Know More?" resource appendix at the end of this book will give you an idea of where we think you should look for further discussion.

In addition, you will surely find Que Publishing's Exam Cram 2 insurance licensing preparation materials useful in your quest for insurance knowledge. Exam Cram 2 books provide you with a review of the essential information you need to know to pass the tests. They focus on the detailed information in the Concepts texts available from BISYS Education Services. Together, the BISYS Education Services license training packages and the Exam Cram 2 review materials create a powerful exam preparation program.

This set of required and recommended materials represents an unparalleled collection of sources and resources for insurance licensing qualification and related topics. Our hope is you'll find that this book belongs in that company.

What This Book Will Not Do

This book by itself will not teach you everything you need to know to pass your insurance licensing exam. It does not cover the state-specific topics that appear on the exam, usually dealing with laws that apply only in your particular state. That information, although it represents a small proportion of the entire exam, is critical to passing the exam. State-specific topics are covered in the state insurance law digests available from BISYS Education Services. This book reviews the rest of what you need to know before you take the test, with the fundamental purpose dedicated to reviewing the non–state-specific information on the insurance licensing exam.

What This Book Is Designed to Do

This book uses a variety of teaching and memorization techniques to analyze the exam-related topics and to provide you with ways to input, index, and retrieve what you need to know in order to pass the test.

This book is designed to be read as a pointer to the areas of knowledge on the test. In other words, you may want to read the book through once to get an insight into how comprehensive your knowledge of insurance is. The book is also designed to be read shortly before you go for the actual test and to give you a distillation of the topics covered by the exam in as few pages as possible. We think you can use this book to get a sense of the underlying context of any topic in the chapters—or to skim-read for Exam Alerts,...

Product Details

• Paperback: 600 pages
• Publisher: Pearson Education (December 13, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789732602
• ISBN-13: 978-0789732606
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #57,367 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > Insurance > Life
  • #89 in Books > Education & Reference > Education > Test Guides - Graduate & Professional > Professional

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life Saver, August 21, 2006

By 

Robert E. Rodarte "Licensed broker" (San Jose, California United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Life and Health Insurance License Exam Cram (Paperback)

In regard to "Exam Cram, Life and Health" I would recommend this book to my adult children if they want to pass the California exam. In addition to being a great test preparation book, I was able to get my computer to read the book to me, by using Adobe and Microsoft text-to-speech programming, which is free to the general public. This book was much better than the text provided by the school. It even includes information needed to open my own business.
Good luck, Bob.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very helpful., January 6, 2008

By 

K. Feldman (Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Life and Health Insurance License Exam Cram (Paperback)

When I decided to make a career change, I didn't have the luxury of taking a lot of courses and time to study. I needed to jump right in and start working as an assistant. I couldn't without my Group 1 license. I finished the book in one week, practiced the tests on the CD and passed the exam the first time.

The book is an easy read, although there are a couple of technical areas which could use a little more depth. The chapter tests help point out areas to review and the CD was a big help going back over the entire book.

All in all, it was worth the price.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It did what it was supposed to, January 5, 2007

By 

L. Murphy (Washington State) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Life and Health Insurance License Exam Cram (Paperback)

It coverd the same stuff as my course material, but in some cases it was easier to understand and it had additional test questions included to help me study. I passed the test the first time.