What's a Passing Score on the California Life & Health Insurance License (CA-LH)? (And How to Get There)
In short
60%, which on a 150-question paper means 90 right answers. You can afford to miss 60. The figure is California's own. Every state sets its own score for life and health producers, and 70% is common elsewhere, so confirm the number with your state's insurance department before you study toward it.
The passing score
You get 180 minutes for those 150 questions — 72 seconds each if you spread the clock evenly. Every one of them is multiple choice; the paper carries no other format.
The California Life & Health Insurance License exam is a state licensure exam, so 60% is a California number and nothing more.
What that means for how you study
Sixty misses is a real budget, and ten sections are competing for it.
General Insurance Regulation takes the largest share: 25% of the exam, which on 150 questions is about 38 items. Score zero there and you have spent 38 of your 60 misses inside one section. It is also the section written to California's own insurance code: CDI producer licensing, marketing and replacement rules, unfair trade practices, and CLHIGA. That last one is the association that steps in for policyholders when an insurer becomes insolvent. The rest of the syllabus follows nationally uniform NAIC model content.
Here is the whole paper priced the same way. The published weights add up to 99.9%, so read each question count as approximate.
| Syllabus section | Weight | ≈ questions | Budgeted hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| General Insurance Regulation | 25.0% | 38 | 15 |
| Policy Riders, Provisions, Options, and Exclusions | 12.5% | 19 | 7.5 |
| Other Health Insurance Concepts | 12.5% | 19 | 7.5 |
| Types of Policies | 8.3% | 12 | 5 |
| Completing the Application, Underwriting, and Delivering the Policy | 8.3% | 12 | 5 |
| Retirement and Other Insurance Concepts | 8.3% | 12 | 5 |
| Types of Accident & Health Policies | 8.3% | 12 | 5 |
| Health Policy Provisions, Clauses, and Riders | 8.3% | 12 | 5 |
| Social Insurance | 4.2% | 6 | 2.5 |
| Field Underwriting Procedures | 4.2% | 6 | 2.5 |
Our syllabus breakdown budgets 60 hours in total, and the last column is how it splits them — by weight. A quarter of your time lands on the California regulation material, which is also 11 of the syllabus's 45 topics. Copy that ratio.
The three heaviest sections come to exactly 50.0% between them — half the paper. Answer every question in those three correctly and you are still 15 marks short of 90. The other 15 have to come from the seven smaller sections, so there is no route to a pass that skips them.
Those smaller sections are cheaper to close out. Types of Policies is five topics, five budgeted hours, covering term life insurance, annuities, traditional whole life, and the interest-sensitive and adjustable policies. Policy Riders, Provisions, Options, and Exclusions is also five topics, but 7.5 hours and 12.5% of the paper. Nonforfeiture options, dividends and policy loans live there, next to the standard policy provisions.
Turning a practice set into an order of work:
Score your practice questions section by section →
multiply each section's error rate by its real question count →
rank the sections by predicted misses, not by how wrong the section felt →
put your next study hour at the top of that list.
Whatever margin you set above 60%, price it in questions. Ten points is 15 questions of slack. That absorbs a total blank on any one of the seven sections at 8.3% or below. It does not stretch to either 12.5% section at 19 questions, and it is nowhere near the 38 in General Insurance Regulation.
Common questions
What is the passing score for the CA-LH exam? 60% in California, which is 90 of the 150 questions. Each state sets its own requirement and 70% is common, so verify the number with the department of insurance in the state you are testing under.
How many questions are on the CA-LH exam? 150, all multiple choice. They cover the nationally uniform material and California's own regulations in a single exam.
How long do I get? 180 minutes. Across 150 questions that averages 72 seconds apiece.
How much does it cost? About 55, and PSI adds a $43 convenience fee.
Where can I take it? At a CDI or PSI test center, or from home over PSI Bridge remote proctoring.
How long should I study? Our breakdown budgets 60 hours. Fifteen of them belong on General Insurance Regulation, the section carrying 25% of the questions.
Only Ever's practice questions and study guides for this exam are free, including the AI-generated sets other providers put behind a paywall. Try the free practice questions, score yourself section by section, and find out where your 60 misses are going.