The South Dakota Variable Life and Variable Annuity Products license

SDCL 58-30-145 asks a resident individual applying for a producer license to pass a written examination unless exempt under 58-30-52, and 58-30-148 is the closed list of what the director must find before approving the application: at least 18 years old, no act that is a ground for denial under 58-30-167, the fees at 58-2-29 paid, and the examinations passed for the lines applied for. No course is in it. South Dakota then attaches the longest list of exemptions on this site, nine of them, and the ones that matter to an ordinary applicant are on this page.

Read at sdlegislature.gov on 2026-08-16

SDCL 58-30-52(3), and it is four words long: no examination is required of "[a]ttorneys licensed to practice law in this state". Delaware and Maine both exempt attorneys too and both stop at the title line. South Dakota's exemption is in a list that opens "No examination is required of" and names no line at all, so it reaches every one of them. That is the widest attorney exemption from an examination recorded here: Alabama's title act goes further still and removes the license itself, but for one line rather than for all of them.

Read at sdlegislature.gov on 2026-08-16

SDCL 58-30-52(1). No examination is required of an applicant for the same kind of license previously held in South Dakota for at least one year within the five years before applying, if the director deems the applicant fully qualified and competent. Five years is the longest look-back in this phase: Maine allows two, Arizona and Montana one.

Read at sdlegislature.gov on 2026-08-16

SDCL 58-30-52(8). Somebody previously licensed for the same lines of authority in another state sits no examination, while that license is current or if the application arrives within 90 days of its cancellation, provided the applicant was in good standing there and the NAIC producer database shows it for the line requested.

Read at sdlegislature.gov on 2026-08-16

SDCL 58-30-52(9), and it is worth quoting because it says the opposite of its own heading. The section is headed "Exemption from examination requirements" and opens "No examination is required of", and subdivision (9) then reads: a person licensed as a producer in another state who moves here and applies within ninety days of establishing legal residence, and "[a]n examination may be required of that person to obtain any line of authority previously held in the prior state unless the director determines otherwise by rule". The Producer Licensing Model Act writes that sentence the other way up, as no examination SHALL be required except where the regulator determines otherwise by rule. Transcribed here as an exemption because that is what the section it sits in is, and flagged because the wording is South Dakota's alone.

Read at sdlegislature.gov on 2026-08-16