What Is A NDLH?

What Is the NDLH, Exactly?

NDLH stands for the North Dakota Life & Health Insurance Producer Exam. It's the state licensing test that anyone who wants to sell life insurance, annuities, or accident and health products in North Dakota must pass before they can legally hold a resident producer license. North Dakota actually splits this into two separate examinations: one covering Life and Annuity products and law, and a second covering Accident and Health. This site focuses on the commercially dominant of the two - the Life and Annuity (Product and Laws) exam - because that's the license most new producers pursue first and the one most agencies expect candidates to hold.

If you've seen the term NDLH used elsewhere for a completely different credential, set that aside. On northdakotaexam.com, NDLH refers only to this state insurance producer exam, and every fact here is scoped to that test. For a broader definitional rundown, see What Is NDLH? and the closely related NDLH Meaning and What Does NDLH Stand For? pages, which each approach the same identity question from a slightly different angle.

Who Administers the Exam

The North Dakota Insurance Department sets the licensing rules, but day-to-day exam delivery is handled by PSI, the third-party testing vendor that builds the item bank, staffs test centers, and manages remote proctoring. When you register, you're scheduling through PSI's system, not directly with the state. This two-party structure - state regulator plus testing vendor - is standard across most state insurance exams, and it's why your exam confirmation, candidate handbook, and score report all come from PSI even though the license itself is issued by North Dakota.

PSI offers two delivery formats: an in-person test center session or a remote-proctored session you take from home or your office. Both are computer-based and closed-book. If you choose remote proctoring, be aware that the rules are stricter than a test center in one specific way - no scratch paper and no breaks are allowed during a remote session. If you know you think better with paper for annuity calculations or beneficiary scenarios, a test center may suit you better.

Exam Format and Registration Mechanics

The official Life and Annuity exam consists of 110 scored questions, delivered in a 150-minute window. PSI may seed the exam with an additional 5 to 10 unscored experimental questions that are indistinguishable from scored items - you won't know which ones don't count, so every question deserves full attention. Passing requires a 70% score, which works out to 77 correct answers out of the 110 scored questions.

Registration costs $64 per attempt. There's no calculator allowed and no reference materials permitted at your seat - this is a closed-book exam that tests recall and applied understanding of North Dakota statutes and product mechanics, not lookup skills. For a full cost breakdown including any ancillary fees tied to licensing (not just the exam itself), see NDLH Certification Cost 2026: Complete Pricing Breakdown.

For the exact numeric passing threshold and how it's calculated, our dedicated breakdown at NDLH Passing Score 2026: Exactly What You Need to Pass walks through the scoring math in more depth. If you're still deciding when to sit for the exam relative to your application timeline, NDLH Exam Dates 2026: Testing Windows, Deadlines & Scheduling covers scheduling logistics.

What the Nine Domains Actually Cover

The exam blueprint is organized into nine domains, and they are not weighted evenly. Understanding the weighting is the single most useful thing you can do before you start memorizing anything, because it tells you where your study hours should actually go.

Two domains - North Dakota Laws and Regulations Pertaining to Life Insurance and Annuities (25.5%) and Life Insurance Policy Provisions, Options, and Riders (18.2%) - together account for nearly 44% of the scored questions. If you only had time to master two areas, these would be the two.

The remaining domains - Life Insurance Basics (11.8%), Types of Life Insurance Policies (12.7%), Insurance Regulation (10.9%), General Insurance Concepts (7.3%), Annuities (7.3%), Federal Tax Considerations (3.6%), and Federal Laws and Regulations (2.7%) - round out the blueprint. None of them should be skipped, but they warrant proportionally less study time than the top two. A full walkthrough of every domain, with more granular subtopics, is available at NDLH Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 9 Content Areas.

Who Needs an NDLH and Who Hires For It

Anyone planning to sell life insurance or fixed/variable annuities as a resident producer in North Dakota needs to pass this exam as a prerequisite to licensure. In practice, that means the exam is relevant to a fairly wide range of hiring paths:

• Independent agents building a book of life and annuity business
• Career agents hired directly by carriers such as regional and national life insurers with a North Dakota presence
• Financial services professionals who need a life/annuity license to pair with securities licensing
• Bank and credit union employees selling annuity products through the institution's insurance arm
• Multi-line insurance agency staff expanding from property/casualty into life and annuity sales

Because this is a licensing requirement rather than an optional resume credential, employers in these categories generally treat passing the NDLH as a hard gate rather than a nice-to-have. If you're weighing whether pursuing this license is worth the time and cost relative to your career goals, Is the NDLH Certification Worth It? Complete ROI Analysis 2026 and NDLH Salary Guide 2026: Complete Earnings Analysis dig into that question in more detail. For openings that specifically list this license as a requirement, browse NDLH Jobs.

Licensing Requirements Beyond the Test

Passing the exam is necessary but not sufficient for licensure. North Dakota's resident producer path also requires:

• Being at least 18 years old
• Meeting the state's residency and character requirements
• Completing a fingerprint-based criminal background check
• Submitting your license application within one year of passing the exam

Notably, North Dakota does not require a state-mandated prelicensing education course before you sit for the exam - you're free to prepare using whatever combination of self-study, a prep course, or practice questions works best for you. That's a meaningful difference from states that require a set number of classroom hours before you're even eligible to register. The complete eligibility checklist, including edge cases like out-of-state applicants, is covered at NDLH Requirements 2026: Eligibility, Prerequisites & How to Qualify.

Building a Domain-Aware Study Schedule

Generic study advice treats every exam the same way, but the NDLH's lopsided domain weighting means your schedule should be lopsided too. A simple four-week plan built around the blueprint might look like this:

This isn't the only workable schedule, but it illustrates the core principle: allocate study time proportional to domain weight, front-load the two heaviest domains, and don't skip the small ones entirely since they're still worth points. A more detailed week-by-week plan with specific resource recommendations is available in NDLH Study Guide 2026: How to Pass on Your First Attempt, and if you want a candid read on how challenging candidates generally find this exam, check How Hard Is the NDLH Exam? Complete Difficulty Guide 2026.

Running timed practice questions on our practice test platform before exam day is one of the most direct ways to simulate the closed-book, no-calculator conditions you'll face at PSI. Because remote sessions don't allow scratch paper, practicing mental math for premium and cash-value scenarios ahead of time matters more than it would for other exams.

After You Pass: Renewal and CE

Passing the exam and getting licensed isn't the finish line - North Dakota producer licenses renew on a two-year (biennial) cycle, and maintaining an active license requires 24 continuing education hours per renewal period, including 3 hours specifically in ethics. If you sell annuities or long-term care products, expect additional specialized training requirements tied to those product lines on top of the general 24-hour CE minimum.

Keeping track of these requirements matters just as much as passing the initial exam, since a lapsed license can interrupt your ability to write business. For a compact, single-page reference of the facts that show up most often - passing score, fee, domain weights, CE cycle - bookmark NDLH Cheat Sheet 2026: One-Page Review of Must-Know Facts.

Frequently Asked Questions