What Is A DE-LH?

What Is a DE-LH?

DE-LH stands for the Delaware Life & Health Insurance Producer Exam - the licensing test that anyone who wants to sell life insurance, accident and health insurance, or both in the state of Delaware must pass. It is not a designation you add to your name after years of experience; it is a gatekeeping exam administered before you're ever allowed to hold yourself out as a licensed producer selling these product lines in Delaware.

If you've landed on this page wondering what is DE-LH in a broader sense, or you've seen the term written as DE-LH meaning or what does DE-LH stand for, the answer is consistent: this acronym, on this site, always refers to the same Delaware producer licensing exam covering life insurance and accident and health insurance. It has nothing to do with unrelated credentials elsewhere that happen to share the same letters.

Who Regulates and Administers the Exam

The Delaware Department of Insurance sets the licensing requirements and the content that candidates must know. Pearson VUE handles the logistics: scheduling, testing centers, delivery of exam content, and score reporting. This split is standard in state insurance licensing - the regulator decides what you need to know, and the testing vendor decides how you sit for it.

Because the Department of Insurance owns the requirements, any changes to fees, content outlines, or renewal rules come from Delaware regulatory bulletins rather than from Pearson VUE. That's worth remembering if you ever see conflicting information online - always weigh Delaware's own published handbook and outline more heavily than third-party summaries.

Exam Structure: Two Major Lines, One Test Day

Delaware treats Life and Accident and Health as separate major-line exams rather than one combined test. In practice, most candidates end up sitting for both, since many producers want to sell both life and health products. The good news is scheduling logistics: if you book both major-line exams for the same day, Delaware charges a single $90 fee rather than paying separately for each.

Each exam runs 2 hours and 15 minutes, so sitting for both back-to-back on the same day means a combined 4 hours and 30 minutes of testing time. Both the Life exam and the Accident and Health exam are also offered in Spanish at Pearson VUE testing centers, which matters if English isn't your primary language for technical insurance terminology.

For a full breakdown of exactly how these numbers translate into study time and difficulty, the DE-LH difficulty guide walks through what candidates report about pacing within that 2-hour-15-minute window per exam.

The 17 Domains That Define the DE-LH

Because the DE-LH is really two exams, its content outline splits into 17 total domains - some covering general insurance knowledge and some covering Delaware-specific statutes and ethics. Understanding which domain you're weak in matters far more than generic "study insurance" advice, since Delaware's own outline weights scored questions unevenly across these areas.

Notice that both exams include their own Insurance Ethics domain - Domain 8 for Life and Domain 17 for Accident and Health. Per the January 15, 2025 content outline, ethics accounts for 24 of the 182 total scored questions across both exams, which is a heavier concentration than many candidates expect from a topic that sounds "soft." Domain weightings are normalized as percentages of the official scored-item counts across the full two-exam path, so a domain's percentage reflects its actual share of scored questions, not a rough guess. For the complete breakdown of every domain's relative weight, see the DE-LH exam domains guide.

Registration, Fees, and Eligibility

Delaware keeps the path to sitting for the DE-LH relatively open compared to some states. There is no requirement to complete a specific prelicensing education program before scheduling your exam - you can self-study, use a course, or combine both approaches, as long as you're prepared to pass.

To become a licensed resident producer, you need to:

• Pass the applicable exam or exams (Life, Accident and Health, or both)
• Submit a Delaware State Police criminal background report
• Pay the $125 producer application fee

Layer that application fee on top of the $90 same-day testing fee, and you have the core cost structure for becoming licensed - though exam prep materials, background check processing, and any retake fees add to the total. For a complete line-by-line cost breakdown, see the DE-LH certification cost guide, and for the full eligibility checklist, review the DE-LH requirements guide.

All testing happens at Pearson VUE centers, so once you're ready, scheduling works the same way as most other state insurance exams. If you need help figuring out realistic scheduling windows and how far in advance to book, the DE-LH exam dates guide covers that logistics piece separately from content prep.

Scoring, Portions, and Retake Rules

Each major-line exam - Life, and separately Accident and Health - is itself split into a general portion and a state-specific portion. This matters enormously for how you handle a failing score. If you fail one portion but pass the other, Delaware doesn't make you retake the whole exam from scratch. You retake only the portion you failed.

There is a time limit attached to this flexibility, though: you must pass the remaining portion within one year of your first attempt. Let that window lapse without passing both portions, and you'll likely need to start the exam process over for that major line.

Exactly how many correct answers you need on scored items to clear each portion - and how that interacts with the pretest questions that don't count toward your score - is detailed further in the DE-LH passing score guide. If you want a data-driven look at how candidates tend to perform on these portions, the DE-LH pass rate article is the place to dig deeper, using only verified figures rather than guesses.

Keeping the License: Renewal and Continuing Education

Passing the DE-LH and getting licensed isn't the end of the story - Delaware resident licenses renew on a biennial cycle, with renewal due by the last day of February in even-numbered years. To renew, producers complete 24 continuing education credits during the biennium, and 3 of those 24 credits must specifically be ethics CE.

There's an added wrinkle for health producers who sell long-term care products: they must complete at least 3 Delaware long-term-care CE hours within that same two-year biennium, on top of the general 24-credit and 3-ethics-credit requirements. If long-term care is part of your book of business, build that separate requirement into your CE planning early so it doesn't sneak up on you near your renewal deadline.

Who Actually Needs a DE-LH

The DE-LH isn't an optional add-on credential - it's mandatory for anyone acting as a producer for life insurance or accident and health insurance business written in Delaware. That includes:

• Independent agents building a book of life insurance clients in Delaware
• Career agents affiliated with a single carrier selling life or health products
• Health insurance brokers handling individual or group A&H policies
• Multi-line producers who already hold licenses in other states and are adding Delaware as a resident or non-resident line
• Financial professionals who need life licensing to pair with securities or advisory credentials

Employers ranging from regional insurance agencies to national carriers with Delaware books of business look for this license as a baseline hiring requirement. If you're weighing whether the licensing effort translates into real opportunity, the DE-LH jobs overview and the DE-LH salary guide break down what roles typically require this license and how compensation structures in the field tend to work. For a broader cost-versus-benefit view before you commit time and money to the process, the DE-LH ROI analysis lays out the tradeoffs plainly.

Building a Realistic Prep Plan

Because the DE-LH is genuinely two exams with 17 combined domains, generic "study for a month" advice doesn't map well onto it. A more useful approach is to sequence your study around the domain split: general knowledge domains first, since they build the conceptual foundation, then Delaware-specific statute domains, then a dedicated final pass on ethics given its 24-question weight.

For a structured walkthrough of this kind of plan with more day-by-day detail, the DE-LH study guide expands on pacing and resource selection. Running timed practice questions on our practice test platform is one of the most direct ways to simulate the actual 2-hour-15-minute, general-plus-state-portion format before you sit for the real thing. If you want a condensed reference for the final week before your exam, the DE-LH cheat sheet distills the must-know facts into a single page, and returning to the main practice test site for a last full-length run-through can help confirm you're ready on both the general and Delaware-specific portions.

Frequently Asked Questions