CISI Capital Markets Programme: The Complete 2026 Guide
Complete the CISI Capital Markets Programme with UK Financial Regulation plus Securities or Derivatives. Compare formats, pass marks, routes and preparation.
How many exams does the CISI Capital Markets Programme take?
Two, not three. Everyone sits UK Financial Regulation, the regulatory unit, and then one technical unit: either Securities or Derivatives. You do not need both technical papers. You must also pass IntegrityMatters before sitting the Programme papers in the UK.
- Exams to complete it
- Two: UK Financial Regulation, plus Securities or Derivatives
- UK Financial Regulation
- 75 questions, 90 minutes, 70% to pass, 4 syllabus elements
- Securities
- 100 questions, 120 minutes, 70% to pass, 9 syllabus elements
- Derivatives
- 100 questions, 120 minutes, 70% to pass, 9 syllabus elements
- Prerequisite
- IntegrityMatters, CISI’s short online integrity test
- Negative marking
- None on any paper, so never leave a question blank
- Workbook
- A CISI workbook must be purchased when booking each unit exam
- Which technical paper
- Follow your role. Securities for cash products, Derivatives for futures, options, swaps, clearing and margin
The CISI Capital Markets Programme is completed with two Level 3 exams: UK Financial Regulation plus one technical unit, either Securities or Derivatives. You do not sit all three. Each paper is computer based with a 70% pass mark, and your role or firm will usually determine which technical route you take.
Major banks and investment firms use the Programme to benchmark people working in securities and derivatives. If you have joined a markets desk, an operations team supporting one or a graduate scheme with a trading-floor rotation, this guide explains the route, formats and preparation in one place.
The three papers at a glance
| Paper | Questions | Time | Pass mark | Syllabus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK Financial Regulation | 75 | 90 min | 70% | 4 elements: the regulatory framework, the FCA, conduct of business, complaints and redress |
| Securities | 100 | 120 min | 70% | 9 elements: asset classes, primary and secondary markets, corporate actions, accounting analysis |
| Derivatives | 100 | 120 min | 70% | 9 elements: futures and options, OTC products, clearing and margin, trading strategies |
All three are computer based, multiple choice, and marked at 70% with no negative marking, so you should never leave a question blank. Each syllabus element carries a fixed question weighting, which means you can, and should, revise to the weightings rather than giving every chapter equal time.
What the qualification is, officially
The Capital Markets Programme is a route rather than a single certificate. Pass the regulatory unit plus one technical unit and CISI awards the certificate your technical unit points to: the Level 3 Certificate in Securities, or the Level 3 Certificate in Derivatives. CISI gives a total qualification time of 183 hours, and recommends a minimum of 90 hours of study for UK Financial Regulation and 100 for each technical unit. Passing carries 6 CPD hours for the regulatory paper and 8 for either technical paper.
If you have sat CISI exams before, check the exemption rules first. The regulatory unit is shared with the Investment Operations Certificate, and passing it on one award exempts you from the same unit on the other.
One thing to expect on the day. CISI states that any of its multiple-choice exams may carry up to 10% additional trial questions, mixed in with the live ones and not flagged. They are unscored and carry proportionately more time, so your paper may run past 75 or 100 questions. That is normal and it is not a mistake.
Before you can sit anything: IntegrityMatters
The Programme has a prerequisite that catches people out. Before you can sit the CMP exams in the UK you must pass IntegrityMatters, CISI's short online integrity test. It is not difficult, but it is compulsory, so get it done in your first week of preparation rather than discovering it the day you try to book. One more piece of admin: a CISI workbook must be purchased when booking each Capital Markets Programme unit exam, so budget for that alongside the exam fee.
Securities or Derivatives?
If your firm has not already chosen for you, the honest answer is that it should follow your role. Securities is the natural fit if you work with cash products: equities, bonds, new issues, corporate actions, or the operations that support them. Derivatives is the fit if your desk lives in futures, options, swaps and the clearing and margin machinery behind them.
Neither is meaningfully easier. Securities carries more calculation and accounting analysis, and candidates who have not drilled the ratios lose easy marks there. Derivatives is lighter on arithmetic but dense with terminology and mechanics: long versus short, covered versus naked, initial versus variation margin, and the exam is built around whether you can keep those pairs straight. We have a full guide to each: how to pass the Securities exam and how to pass the Derivatives exam.
What order to sit them in
Most candidates sit UK Financial Regulation first. It is the shorter paper, every CMP candidate has to pass it regardless of technical unit, and getting it done early builds momentum before the longer technical paper. It is also the paper where revising from stale material hurts most, because it tests current UK regulation: the FCA's rules, conduct of business, complaints handling and compensation limits all move over time. Make sure whatever you practise from reflects the current rules. Our UK Financial Regulation guide breaks down the four elements and where the marks concentrate.
There is nothing wrong with doing the technical paper first if your desk wants it that way. The two papers barely overlap, so the order is logistics, not strategy.
Test yourself on CMP: UK Regulation
4 questions written to the current syllabus, in the format of the real paper. Pick an answer and the explanation appears. Nothing to sign up for.
The Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SM&CR) includes individual conduct rules. How many conduct rules apply to all regulated individuals?
Not quite. The answer is B.
There are five individual conduct rules that apply to all individuals subject to the SM&CR: (1) act with integrity; (2) act with due skill, care and diligence; (3) be open and cooperative with regulators; (4) pay due regard to interests of customers; (5) observe proper standards of market conduct. Senior managers face four additional conduct rules, giving nine in total.
When assessing 'best execution', which factor is considered the most important for retail clients when executing orders?
Not quite. The answer is B.
For retail clients the FCA makes total consideration the governing test: the price of the instrument plus every cost of execution, taking in broker charges, venue fees, taxes and clearing costs. Price on its own falls short, because those costs are exactly what the rule folds into the comparison. Speed on a venue is a genuine execution factor but it ranks below cost once the client is retail, and a firm's own holding on a venue is not a permitted factor at all, since routing an order to suit the firm's book works against the duty it owes.
What is the maximum term of imprisonment for an individual convicted on indictment of bribery?
Not quite. The answer is C.
An individual convicted on indictment under the Bribery Act faces up to ten years' imprisonment, an unlimited fine, or both. Fourteen years is the closest distractor because that is the ceiling for the principal money laundering offences, and candidates routinely carry it across to bribery.
Which of the following is NOT one of the data protection principles?
Not quite. The answer is D.
The principles require personal data to be processed lawfully, fairly and transparently, to be accurate and kept up to date, and to be adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary. Security is a principle too, but it is expressed as appropriate technical and organisational measures, and encryption by default is one possible measure rather than a principle in its own right. The closest distractor is accuracy: a firm must correct or delete inaccurate data without delay, so it is genuinely a principle.
That is 4 of more than 10,800 questions in the PasskeyPrep bank. Chapter 1 of every exam is free, with the study notes and flashcards that go with it, and every answer is marked and explained the way these were.
How hard are the CMP papers?
Harder than the Introduction to Securities & Investment, and it is worth being honest about why. The papers are longer, at 75 to 100 questions, the syllabuses go deeper, and the questions test application rather than recognition. The failure pattern is the same one we see across every exam PasskeyPrep covers: candidates read the workbook, feel familiar with the material, and never test themselves under the clock. Familiarity is not recall. A paper full of carefully written distractors punishes that gap ruthlessly.
The fix is equally consistent. Read the workbook once to build the map. Then spend the bulk of your preparation answering exam-standard questions element by element, hunting your weak spots, and finishing with full timed mocks weighted exactly like the real paper. When you are clearing 70% comfortably and repeatedly on weighted mocks, use that evidence alongside your timetable and remaining weak areas when deciding whether to book. The method is covered in depth in our complete guide to passing CISI exams.
Want to see where you stand on any CMP paper before committing to a study plan? Try the free practice questions for UK Financial Regulation, Securities and Derivatives. No sign-up, full explanations.
The pass rates CISI publishes, and what they are worth
CISI does publish a pass rate for every unit, and almost nobody finds it. On CISI's Capital Markets Programme page, clicking a unit name opens a panel headed Pass Mark / Pass Rate. Checked on 18 August 2026 it gave the following.
| Paper | Pass mark | Published pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| UK Financial Regulation | 70% | 78% |
| Securities | 70% | 83% |
| Derivatives | 70% | 84% |
Keep the two apart. The pass mark is the threshold you have to clear. The pass rate is the share of candidates who cleared it. A pass rate in the eighties does not make a paper easy, and it is not a prediction about you. These exams are mostly sat by people who are funded, timetabled and chased by an employer, which is a very different population from someone revising alone in the evenings.
Treat the numbers carefully for a second reason: CISI does not state what period they cover, whether resits are counted alongside first attempts, or how often they are refreshed.
There is one oddity worth knowing on UK Financial Regulation. CISI states a 70% pass mark, and separately publishes grade bands of Pass with merit at 68 to 75 marks, Pass at 52 to 67, and Fail at 0 to 51. Fifty-two out of 75 is 69.3%, so the published band is a mark more generous than the percentage implies. Securities and Derivatives have no such gap, both being Pass at 70 to 100 marks out of 100, and neither has a merit grade. We mark 53 out of 75 in our own UK Financial Regulation mocks, which is the stricter reading of the two.
What the Programme costs you
These are CISI's published UK prices for the year running 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, read from CISI's price list on 18 August 2026. International pricing differs, and international bookings bundle in things UK ones do not, so check CISI's list directly if you are sitting outside the UK.
| Paper | Exam fee | Workbook | Saver |
|---|---|---|---|
| UK Financial Regulation | £247.00 | £105.00 | £367.00 |
| Securities | £286.00 | £105.00 | £406.00 |
| Derivatives | £286.00 | £105.00 | £406.00 |
The saver is CISI's package price for the exam, the workbook and Revision Express bought together. On top of whichever route you take, there is a one-off Qualification Registration Fee of £68.00 when you register your first CISI qualification. It is charged once, however many exams follow.
So the cheapest published route through the Programme is £68.00 to register plus two saver packages, which is £841.00 whether your technical unit is Securities or Derivatives. CISI does not publish that total anywhere. It is simply the sum of the figures above, and it is the number worth having in mind before you start.
Three things the table does not tell you. The workbook is not optional in the UK: CISI's mandatory workbook policy requires the current one when you book, including when a training partner books for you. The saver package cannot be added to a basket, and has to be ordered by contacting CISI. And concessionary exam rates are available to unemployed candidates, which CISI does not advertise prominently.
Before you fix a date, two rules are worth knowing: withdrawing returns nothing, neither the exam fee nor the learning materials, and moving your date is only free with more than 14 days' notice. For what Revision Express actually contains before you decide whether the saver is worth it, see our guide to Revision Express.
CISI exam dates: what actually goes in the diary
There is no Capital Markets Programme exam calendar to wait for, which is why searching for CISI exam dates for 2026 turns up no list of sittings. CISI's computer-based exams are available on demand through its network of test centres, and most can be sat remotely instead. You choose the date and time when you book.
The dates that do matter are the syllabus and workbook changeovers, because they decide which version of the paper you sit.
| Paper | Current edition | Examined until |
|---|---|---|
| UK Financial Regulation | 33 | 31 March 2027 |
| Securities | 21 | 21 March 2027 |
| Derivatives | 21 | 10 February 2027 |
Two consequences. Buy a workbook late in an edition's life, fail, and the edition can expire before you resit. Book a date the other side of a changeover and you sit the new version, not the one you revised from. CISI republishes its editions chart as editions move, so check that rather than this table if you are booking near a changeover.
One page almost nobody checks: CISI's Candidate Update area lists amendments to current syllabuses and learning materials. Those amendments are examinable.
CISI exam results: how long they take
For multiple-choice papers, which is all three Capital Markets Programme units, CISI says results are available online within 24 working hours through MyCISI. They stay provisional until five working days after your exam date, which is the window CISI keeps for investigating anything that might affect a result. After that the certificate confirming your result becomes available to view and print. CISI's narrative exams take around nine weeks, but no Capital Markets Programme paper is narrative.
Two things follow from the format. There is no remark or review of a multiple-choice result, because the marking is automatic. And your employer cannot see your result unless you set your data sharing preferences in MyCISI.
If you fail, ask CISI for a Performance Review. It breaks the result down by syllabus element and shows how you managed your time. Then read the resit rules before rebooking: you must wait 96 hours before sitting the same paper again, you may attempt the same subject a maximum of six times in any 12 months, and a rest period is enforced once you have sat it three times inside 12 months.
Where PasskeyPrep fits
PasskeyPrep covers all three Capital Markets Programme papers, alongside the Introduction to Securities & Investment and Global Securities Operations, in one place. You practise by element, the weak-spot tracker shows you where your marks are leaking, spaced repetition brings those topics back until they stick, and the mock exams replicate each paper's exact element weightings and clock: 75 questions in 90 minutes for UK Financial Regulation, 100 in 120 for Securities and Derivatives. See PasskeyPrep pricing and everything included: one payment covers 90 days from purchase, £59 for the paper you are sitting or £89 for every exam we support.
To be clear about what we are: PasskeyPrep is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or accredited by the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment. Every question is written from scratch against the current syllabus and current UK regulation. The qualification comes from CISI. We help you walk in ready.
Go deeper on each paper
- How to pass UK Financial Regulation
- How to pass the Securities exam
- How to pass the Derivatives exam
- UK Financial Regulation past papers & mocks
- Securities past papers & mocks
- Derivatives past papers & mocks
- Which CISI exam should you take first?
- How hard is the CISI exam, really?
The Programme is one of four routes we cover. The others are the Investment Advice Diploma for advice roles, the Investment Operations Certificate for operations, and the risk and compliance awards.
Frequently asked questions
How many exams do I need to pass the Capital Markets Programme?
Two. UK Financial Regulation is compulsory for everyone, and you then sit one technical unit: Securities or Derivatives. You do not need both technical papers. PasskeyPrep covers all three so you are prepared whichever route your firm points you toward.
Do I need to pass IntegrityMatters before the CMP exams?
Yes. In the UK, CISI requires you to pass IntegrityMatters, its short online integrity test, before sitting the Capital Markets Programme exams. It is quick, but it is compulsory, so complete it early in your preparation.
Should I choose Securities or Derivatives?
Follow your role. Securities fits cash products: equities, bonds, new issues, corporate actions and the operations behind them. Derivatives fits futures, options, swaps, clearing and margin. Neither is meaningfully easier; Securities is heavier on calculation, Derivatives on terminology and mechanics. Most firms tell you which one they expect.
What is the format and pass mark for each CMP paper?
UK Financial Regulation is 75 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes across 4 syllabus elements. Securities and Derivatives are each 100 questions in 120 minutes across 9 elements. Every paper is computer based with a 70% pass mark and no negative marking, so always answer every question.
How long should I study for a Capital Markets Programme exam?
Longer than for the Introduction exam, because the papers are longer and go deeper. What matters more than the hours is the method: read the workbook once to build the picture, then spend most of your time answering questions, attacking your weak elements, and finishing with full timed mocks weighted like the real paper.