LA Life & Health common mistakes
LA Life & Health · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
On licensing and continuing-education items you answer from a generic 'national' memory - picking a renewal cycle, CE hour count, or ethics-hour figure - without asking whether the item is testing the Louisiana rule specifically, and you treat license renewal, appointment, and CE reporting deadlines as if they were the same date.
Prelicensing courses and generic question apps drill NAIC model numbers; Louisiana's own cycle, hour split, and reporting deadlines differ, and the exam deliberately places license, appointment, and CE deadlines side by side in one stem.
What to do instead
Build a one-page 'Louisiana only' card with four rows - license term and renewal window, CE hours by category, appointment and termination-notice rules, and the reporting deadline. Before answering any regulation item, ask 'is the answer a state-specific number?' If yes and you cannot recall it, flag the item rather than substituting a national figure.
You treat a replacement - including a 1035 exchange into a new annuity or life policy - as an ordinary new sale, so you skip the replacement notice given to the applicant, the producer's signed statement, and the disclosure to the existing insurer, and you do not recognize that the existing insurer has duties of its own.
The application looks identical to a first-time sale, so the extra paperwork feels like a compliance afterthought rather than the point being tested.
What to do instead
For every 'client wants to move coverage or money' stem, run a four-step checklist before reading the choices: (1) is this a replacement? (2) what notice must be delivered to the applicant at or before application? (3) what must be sent to the existing insurer? (4) what happens during the right-to-return or free-look window? Answer only from the checklist.
You answer life questions with property-casualty doctrine - applying indemnity, subrogation, or actual cash value to a death benefit, or asking whether insurable interest still exists at the time of death instead of at policy inception.
The general-concepts section teaches both worlds and the vocabulary overlaps (insurable interest, indemnity, utmost good faith), so the wrong doctrine attaches to the product.
What to do instead
Keep a two-column contrast sheet: life (insurable interest at inception only, no subrogation, benefit not capped by the loss, aleatory) versus property-casualty (interest required at time of loss, subrogation, indemnity). Before answering, name the product line in one word, then apply that column only.
On business-use questions you cannot state who owns the policy, who pays the premium, and who receives the proceeds - treating key-person coverage, an entity buy-sell, a cross-purchase buy-sell, and split-dollar as interchangeable.
All four involve an employer, an insured employee, and a business purpose, so the stems read alike; the tested difference is ownership and funding, which the stem never labels for you.
What to do instead
Memorize a three-cell grid for each arrangement - owner / payer / beneficiary. Key person: business owns, pays, and is beneficiary. Entity buy-sell: business owns and is beneficiary. Cross-purchase: each owner insures the others. Split-dollar: premium and proceeds split per the endorsement or collateral assignment method. Sketch the grid on scratch paper at the start of the exam.
You answer universal life items with whole life logic - assuming the premium and death benefit are fixed, ignoring that the cost of insurance rises with attained age and is deducted from cash value, and reading a guaranteed-column value when the stem asks about current assumptions.
UL is the one common product that can lapse without a missed premium because charges outrun credited interest, and illustration questions deliberately place guaranteed and current columns next to each other.
What to do instead
Before answering any UL item, label the stem 'G' or 'C' (guaranteed or current) and 'fixed' or 'flexible'. Then apply the mechanics: flexible premium, adjustable death benefit, COI rising with attained age, cash value = premiums + credited interest − charges. If the stem mentions lapse without nonpayment, the answer involves rising COI or a no-lapse guarantee.
You treat every 'option' question as a single topic - choosing extended term for a dividend question, paid-up additions for a nonforfeiture question, or interest only when the stem describes a fixed-period payout - and you skip the arithmetic on settlement options.
Three separate option lists share words like 'paid-up' and 'interest', and the exam draws distractors from the other two lists.
What to do instead
Sort options into three closed lists before looking at the choices: nonforfeiture (cash surrender, reduced paid-up, extended term, automatic premium loan); dividends (cash, reduce premium, accumulate at interest, paid-up additions, one-year term); settlement (lump sum, interest only, fixed period, fixed amount, life income with or without period certain). For fixed-period and fixed-amount items, set up the division - proceeds ÷ number of payments, or proceeds ÷ payment amount - and check whether the question asks about the payout rate or the guarantee feature.
You read a beneficiary stem and go straight to the answer choices without first deciding revocable versus irrevocable, primary versus contingent, and per stirpes versus per capita, so you distribute a deceased child's share to the surviving children when the designation was per capita, or you let an owner change an irrevocable designation.
The designation language sits in one sentence and the distribution rule in another, and phrases like 'equal shares' sound like they cover both rules.
What to do instead
Write three marks before choosing: R/I (revocable or irrevocable), P/C (primary or contingent), S/H (stirpes or capita). Then apply: per stirpes means the deceased beneficiary's share drops to that beneficiary's heirs; per capita means only surviving named beneficiaries share. If the designation is irrevocable, the owner cannot change it, surrender, or take a loan without written consent.
You compute or apply the exclusion ratio without checking the payout structure - using total account value as the denominator instead of expected return, or continuing to exclude part of each payment after the cost basis has already been recovered.
The exclusion ratio is the only formula in the annuity section, so it gets pattern-matched onto questions that are actually about a refund feature, a joint-and-survivor payout, or a payment made after basis is recovered.
What to do instead
Classify the phase first: accumulation (tax-deferred growth, no exclusion ratio) versus annuitization (ratio applies to each payment). Write the ratio as investment in the contract ÷ expected return, and note that once basis is recovered every payment is fully taxable. If the stem names a refund, period-certain, or joint-and-survivor feature, expect the expected-return figure to change.
You blur the health policy time and cost mechanics - using elimination period for a probationary period or the reverse, treating coinsurance as a flat dollar amount, or forgetting that a calendar-year deductible resets and that coinsurance is calculated on the amount above the deductible rather than on the total charge.
Health insurance uses several overlapping waiting concepts and three cost-sharing layers, and the stem states them in one unlabeled sentence.
What to do instead
Keep a small table: probationary period = time from issue during which a specified condition is not covered; elimination period = time from onset of disability before benefits begin; hospital indemnity waiting period = days before the daily benefit starts. For cost math, always run the order: allowed charge → subtract deductible → multiply the remainder by the coinsurance percentage → compare to the out-of-pocket maximum. Only then read the answer choices.
You answer 'when does it pay' questions without naming the product's own benefit trigger - applying an own-occupation test to a policy that uses any-occupation, expecting a flat total benefit where the policy pays residual disability proportionately for lost income, answering long-term care items without the 2-of-6 activities-of-daily-living or cognitive-impairment trigger, and mixing the annual Medicare Advantage election period with Medigap's six-month guaranteed-issue open enrollment.
Disability income, long-term care, and hospital indemnity are all 'pays while you are impaired' products, and the stems share phrases like 'unable to perform' and 'benefit period'; Medicare Parts and Medigap share the word 'enrollment' but not the rules.
What to do instead
Open each such item by naming the product and writing its trigger: DI own-occupation (cannot perform your own job) versus any-occupation (cannot perform any job for which reasonably fitted); residual or partial (proportionate benefit for income loss after the elimination period); LTC (2 of 6 ADLs or cognitive impairment, plus an elimination period). Then check whether the question asks about the trigger, the benefit period, or the enrollment window - and keep Medicare Advantage/Part D election periods in a separate box from Medigap's one-time six-month open enrollment.