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The District of Columbia Variable Life and Variable Annuity license

Variable Life and Variable Annuity

Sells cover provided under variable life insurance contracts and variable annuities in the District of Columbia. The Code lists it among the lines a producer may qualify for and conditions it on nothing else, so unlike most states here it asks for no life line and no securities registration of its own.

Course

None

This license has no pre-licensing course route.

Ways in

2

1 of them skips the state exam.

Exam

$75

Required on some routes and not others.

Every way to qualify

More than one route leads to this license, and which one you take changes what you study and whether you sit the exam. There is no pre-licensing course among them: this license is qualified for by sitting the examination or a license held in another state.

  1. Route 1 Pass the examination

    State exam required

    D.C. Code 31-1131.05(a) asks a resident individual applying for a producer license to pass a written examination unless the application is for a limited lines license or the surplus lines line, or the applicant is exempt under 31-1131.05b or 31-1131.09. 31-1131.06(a) is what the Commissioner must find before approving it: at least 18 years old, no act that is a ground for denial under 31-1131.12, a pre-licensing course of study "if required by the Commissioner", the fees paid, and the examinations passed unless exempt. The District and Massachusetts are the two jurisdictions here where the course was handed to the regulator rather than written into the law or struck out of it: 31-1131.05a(a) gives the Commissioner power to require one by rule of every applicant except a title insurance producer, and the District has no title line because entry (7) was repealed. No such rule has been made, and the Department's own list of what a resident applicant must do carries no course. And there is no Variable paper to sit. Pearson VUE's candidate handbook lists the six examinations the District gives, Life, Health, Property, Casualty, Title and Public Adjuster, and DISB's own annual passing-rate report names the same six; neither carries a Variable row. The line is not among those 31-1131.05(a) excuses, so an applicant is examined on a paper named for another line. That is the reverse of most states here, which excuse the variable applicant from a paper and then ask for a life license and a FINRA registration instead.

    Read at pearsonvue.com on 2026-08-20

  2. Route 2 Hold the same line in another state

    Exempt from the state exam

    • an insurance producer license carrying the Variable Life and Variable Annuity line of insurance in another state

    D.C. Code 31-1131.09(a), and it is the whole of the District's exemption section. Somebody currently licensed for the same line of authority in another state, or applying within 90 days of that license's cancellation with good standing certified by the other state or shown in the NAIC producer database, completes neither prelicensing education nor an examination. Note what is not here: section 31-1131.09 stops at reciprocity and writes no duty on a producer who moves in to apply within 90 days, and its subsections (b) through (e) are all repealed. Counting every route on this site whose kind is residency_transfer, fourteen jurisdictions carry none: Alaska, California, the District, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

    Read at code.dccouncil.gov on 2026-08-16

The District of Columbia Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking requires no pre-licensing course for this license, so there is nothing here to price. Anyone selling you one is selling exam practice.