How to Pass Your CISI Exams: The Complete 2026 Guide
Pass a CISI exam by turning the workbook into active recall, targeted question practice and timed mocks. This guide gives you the format, five-week plan and exam-day tactics.
How do you pass a CISI exam first time?
Read the official workbook once to build the picture, then spend the bulk of your time answering questions and reviewing the explanations, focusing hardest on the topics you keep getting wrong. Finish with full, timed mock exams weighted like the real paper. Every exam PasskeyPrep covers is multiple choice and marked at 70% with no negative marking, so you should never leave a question blank.
- Pass mark
- 70% on all fourteen exams
- Negative marking
- None, so always answer every question
- Study time
- Around 60 to 80 hours is commonly quoted for the Introduction paper. The Capital Markets papers take longer
- What actually works
- Active recall, spaced repetition, and realistic timed mocks weighted like the real paper
- The commonest mistake
- Revising by reading. Reading the workbook is not revision; being tested is
- Booking evidence
- Use repeated weighted, timed mock scores alongside your timetable, confidence and remaining weak areas
- Pass rates
- CISI does not publish official pass rates. The papers are criterion referenced, so there is no curve and no quota
To pass a CISI exam, read the official workbook once, then spend most of your revision on active recall, syllabus-weighted question practice and full timed mocks. Track weak elements, revisit every mistake and use repeated mock results to decide when to book. You can start with free CISI practice questions.
Most people prepare for a CISI paper the same way. They buy the official workbook, read it front to back over a few weeks, highlight the parts that look important, and arrive feeling reasonably ready.
Then the paper asks which of four nearly identical statements is correct, and familiarity turns out to be a different thing from recall. That is what catches people out. Not the difficulty of the material, but a revision method that never once tested whether they could retrieve it with a clock running.
Closing that gap is mechanical rather than clever. Read the workbook once to build the picture, then spend most of your remaining time answering questions, reviewing every mistake properly, and sitting full papers to time. This guide sets out that method for the fourteen CISI exams PasskeyPrep covers: what each paper really tests, where the marks concentrate, the calculations you cannot avoid, and how to judge your progress from evidence rather than hope. It is written by Rueben Yu, a capital markets professional who passed UK Financial Regulation, Securities and Derivatives, not by a content team that has never seen the inside of a Prometric centre.
If you take one thing from this guide: reading the workbook is not revision. Being tested is.
The CISI exams at a glance
PasskeyPrep covers fourteen exams. Two are Level 3 foundation awards, the UK and international Introduction to Securities & Investment. Three make up the Capital Markets Programme, the qualification major banks use to benchmark people working on the securities and derivatives side of the business. One is the Investment Operations Certificate technical unit Global Securities Operations, for people on the operations and settlement side of the market. Five are Level 4 units of the Investment Advice Diploma, the benchmark for wealth management and investment advice roles. And three are standalone Risk & Compliance awards. Risk in Financial Services and Global Financial Compliance can each be combined with a CISI regulatory exam to earn the corresponding Level 3 Certificate. Combating Financial Crime is a Level 3 Award in its own right, and the same paper doubles as an IOC technical unit and as an optional unit of the Level 6 Diploma in Investment Compliance.
| Exam | Questions | Time | Pass mark | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction to Securities & Investment | 50 | 60 min | 70% | The Level 3 foundation award, eleven syllabus elements covering the whole industry |
| International Introduction to Securities & Investment | 50 | 60 min | 70% | The Level 3 international foundation unit covering markets, products, regulation, ethics and advice |
| UK Financial Regulation | 75 | 90 min | 70% | CMP regulatory unit: the FCA, conduct of business, market integrity, complaints and redress |
| Securities | 100 | 120 min | 70% | CMP technical unit: asset classes, primary and secondary markets, corporate actions, accounting analysis |
| Derivatives | 100 | 120 min | 70% | CMP technical unit: pricing, OTC products, clearing and margin, trading strategies |
| Global Securities Operations | 50 | 60 min | 70% | IOC technical unit: settlement, custody, corporate actions, client assets and reconciliations |
| Investment, Risk & Taxation | 80 | 120 min | 70% | IAD unit: asset classes, portfolio theory, UK tax and investment products for advisers |
| Financial Planning & Advice | 80 | 120 min | 70% | IAD unit: the advice process, protection, pensions and retirement planning |
| Risk in Financial Services | 100 | 120 min | 70% | Level 3 Award: operational, credit, market, liquidity and enterprise risk |
| Global Financial Compliance | 100 | 120 min | 70% | Level 3 Award: international regulation, the compliance function and financial crime |
| UK Regulation & Professional Integrity | 80 | 120 min | 70% | IAD compulsory core unit: the regulatory framework, FCA supervision and Consumer Duty, conduct of business, ethics, financial crime and complaints |
| Securities (Investment Advice Diploma) | 80 | 120 min | 70% | IAD technical unit: markets, securities analysis, portfolio construction, settlement, custody and administration |
| Derivatives (Investment Advice Diploma) | 80 | 120 min | 70% | IAD technical unit: futures, options, OTC contracts, clearing, settlement, trading, hedging and regulation |
| Combating Financial Crime | 50 | 60 min | 70% | Level 3 Award: money laundering, terrorist financing, bribery, fraud, sanctions and financial crime risk management |
A few things worth knowing before you pick a paper. The Capital Markets Programme is completed with two exams, not three. You sit UK Financial Regulation, the regulatory unit, plus one technical unit: Securities or Derivatives. You do not have to do both technical papers. PasskeyPrep covers all three so you are prepared whichever route your desk or your firm points you toward. The Programme also has a prerequisite. Before sitting a CMP exam in the UK you must pass IntegrityMatters, CISI's short online integrity test. Check the CISI IntegrityMatters pass mark and format, then complete it early so it is not a last-minute surprise.
Global Securities Operations is the technical unit of the Investment Operations Certificate, for those on the operations and settlement side of the market. PasskeyPrep supports five Level 4 Investment Advice Diploma units: UK Regulation & Professional Integrity, Investment, Risk & Taxation, Financial Planning & Advice, IAD Securities and IAD Derivatives.
One more point of confusion to clear up. The exam most people mean by "the CISI intro" is the UK Introduction to Securities & Investment (CISI now lists this qualification as the Level 3 Award 'Introduction to Investment' in its exam shop). CISI also runs an International Introduction (often shortened to IISI) and a Level 2 award called Fundamentals of Financial Services. They are related but they are not the same exam, so make sure the material you revise from matches the paper you are actually booked for. Not sure which paper to start with? Our guide on which CISI exam to take first walks through it.
Every exam PasskeyPrep covers is multiple choice, computer based, and marked at 70% to pass. Crucially, there is no negative marking. A wrong answer costs you nothing more than a blank one would, so you should never leave a question unanswered. We will come back to that on exam day.
Test yourself on Intro to S&I (UK)
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.
What do the letters in ESG investing stand for?
Not quite. The answer is A.
ESG investing weighs environmental factors such as emissions, social factors such as labour standards, and governance factors such as board independence, alongside conventional financial analysis. Ethical, sustainable and green describe related investment styles and are the closest runner-up, but they are not what the initials stand for. The remaining expansions are invented, and earnings and sales growth are conventional financial measures rather than ESG factors.
The Bank of England raises Bank Rate while rates overseas are unchanged, and sterling appreciates as a result. Which of the following explains the move?
Not quite. The answer is B.
Higher UK rates raise the return on sterling assets, so overseas investors must buy pounds in order to hold them, and that extra demand lifts the exchange rate. Dearer imports are the runner-up because they do accompany a move in the exchange rate, but they follow it rather than cause it, and in any case a stronger pound makes imports cheaper. UK savers moving money into overseas bonds would sell pounds and push sterling down, and it is UK yields that have just risen, while weaker export sales would weaken the currency too.
Which of the following is an unsecured promissory note issued by a large company to cover a few weeks or months of funding?
Not quite. The answer is C.
Commercial paper is short-term unsecured borrowing by a large, creditworthy company, issued at a discount to face value and repaid in full at maturity. A Treasury bill is the same shape of instrument but issued by government, a certificate of deposit is a bank's receipt for money deposited with it, and a money market fund is a pooled investment rather than a borrowing.
The main risk that a central counterparty removes for a clearing member is:
Not quite. The answer is B.
By novation the clearing house becomes buyer to every seller and seller to every buyer, so each member faces the clearing house rather than the firm on the other side of the trade. Market risk remains, because the value of the position still moves with prices, and inflation still erodes what that value is worth in real terms. A member's own operational risk, meaning failures in its systems, its records and its people, stays firmly with the member and if anything grows with the obligations that membership brings.
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.
Why people fail (and it is almost never the maths)
If you understand why candidates fail, you understand how to pass. Across all fourteen papers, the same handful of mistakes come up again and again.
The first is passive revision. Reading the workbook feels productive because the words are familiar as you go. Familiarity is not recall. The exam does not ask "does this look right", it asks "which of these four very similar statements is correct", and recognising the page a fact came from will not save you.
The second is underestimating the sheer volume of terminology. CISI papers are broad rather than deep. The Introduction exam alone touches retail banking, central banks, equities, bonds, derivatives, funds, regulation, tax and advice. None of it is conceptually difficult. All of it has to be precise. The candidates who come unstuck are usually the ones who assumed general business knowledge would carry them.
The third is never practising under time pressure. You have a little over a minute per question on most papers. That is plenty if you know the material cold and a disaster if you are still reasoning each one out from first principles. Speed is a skill, and like any skill it only comes from rehearsal.
The fourth is revising everything evenly. Your weak topics are where your marks leak away, yet they are the topics people instinctively avoid because they are uncomfortable. Effective revision does the opposite. It hunts down your weak spots and hammers them until they are no longer weak.
The fifth is the quiet one: not knowing when you are ready. People either book too early, on a hunch, and fail by a couple of marks, or they keep delaying because they never feel confident. Both are solved the same way, with an honest, weighted mock score instead of a feeling.
The method that works
Good CISI preparation is built on three things, and they are not controversial. Cognitive science has said the same for decades.
Active recall
You learn by retrieving information, not by reviewing it. Every time you pull an answer out of your own head, right or wrong, you strengthen the memory. So the centre of your revision should be questions, not pages. Read the workbook once to build the initial picture, then spend the bulk of your time being tested.
Spaced repetition
Topics you find hard should come back more often; topics you have mastered should fade into the background so you are not wasting time on them. A simple system that tracks what you keep getting wrong, and feeds it back to you on a schedule, is worth more than any number of re-reads.
Realistic, timed mocks
Full, timed mocks give you a consistent rehearsal and a useful way to track whether your scores are clearing the pass mark. Not a loose quiz, but a full paper with the same element weightings and the same clock. If your mocks mirror the real format, repeated scores give you more useful evidence than a single untimed quiz.
PasskeyPrep is built around these three ideas on purpose, but you do not need us to apply them. You need to spend most of your revision answering questions, you need to keep coming back to your weak topics, and you need to sit full mocks before exam day. Doing those three things, with any tool or none, gives you a much stronger preparation process. We just make them effortless.
A study plan you can actually follow
Treat these as sensible defaults, then flex them to your starting point and the paper you are sitting. The Introduction exam is commonly quoted at around 60 to 80 hours of study for someone new to the industry. The Capital Markets papers ask for more, both because they are longer and because they go deeper.
Weeks one to two: build the picture
Read the workbook for your exam once, at a steady pace, without trying to memorise everything. The goal is a mental map of the syllabus, so that when a question mentions a covered bond or a depositary you know roughly where it sits. Do not highlight half the book. Highlighting is not learning.
Weeks two to four: test relentlessly
This is where the marks are made. Move to question practice and stay there. Work through each syllabus element, and whenever you get something wrong, read the explanation properly before moving on. Be honest with yourself about the questions you got right by guessing, because a right-but-guessed answer is a gap you have not closed. PasskeyPrep flags those for you, but you can do it with a pen and paper too.
Weeks four to five: attack your weak spots
By now your data, or your gut, will tell you which elements are letting you down. Spend disproportionate time there. This is the opposite of comfortable revision and it is exactly where the improvement lives.
Final week: sit full mocks
Switch to complete, timed papers weighted like the real exam. Sit them in one go, no pausing, no looking things up. Review every paper afterwards, element by element. When you are clearing the pass mark comfortably and consistently across more than one mock, use that evidence alongside your timetable and remaining weak areas.
If you only have a fortnight, compress the picture-building into a couple of evenings and spend everything else on questions and mocks. Questions and mocks are non-negotiable. The reading is not.
Not sure where you stand right now? The free Introduction diagnostic takes a few minutes and samples nine of the 11 Introduction syllabus elements and highlights the sampled topics to revisit, giving you an honest foundation-level snapshot before you spend a penny. It is the fastest way to turn a vague "I should probably revise" into a specific plan.
The calculations you cannot avoid
Most CISI questions test recall and understanding, but a meaningful slice asks you to calculate. These are free marks if you have drilled them and dropped marks if you have not, because under time pressure you will not work out a formula you have never practised. The ones that come up most:
- Dividend yield, the annual dividend over the share price. Simple once you have done a few, and we walk through it with worked examples in our dividend yield guide.
- Bond yields, especially the flat yield and how it differs from the redemption yield. Candidates dread these and they should not. See flat yield versus redemption yield.
- Effective annual rate, turning a quoted rate into the true annual cost, which the Introduction and Other Financial Products topics both lean on.
- Forward exchange rates using interest rate parity, which trips people because of the direction of the adjustment rather than the arithmetic.
- Rights and bonus issues, working out the theoretical price after a corporate action.
You do not need to be quick at mental arithmetic. You need to recognise the question type instantly and apply the formula without hesitation. That only comes from doing twenty of each, not from reading the method once.
Exam day
By the time you sit down at the test centre or in front of your remote-proctored screen, the work is done. Exam day is about not throwing away marks you have already earned.
Watch the clock but do not race it. With roughly a minute per question you have time to read each one properly, which matters because CISI loves a question where one word changes the answer. Read the full question and all four options before you commit.
Answer every single question. There is no negative marking, so a guess is strictly better than a blank. If a question is taking too long, flag it, put down your best guess, and move on. You can come back with the time you save.
Do not talk yourself out of right answers on the review pass. If you have prepared properly, your first instinct is usually correct. Change an answer only when you have a clear reason, not a vague worry.
Use repeated mock scores as one piece of evidence. If you have been averaging comfortably above the pass mark on weighted, timed mocks, you have rehearsed the format and identified fewer remaining gaps. Treat that evidence as guidance, not a guarantee of the real result.
Where PasskeyPrep fits
Everything above you can do on your own. PasskeyPrep simply removes the friction and gives you the evidence.
You pick your exam and take a few practice rounds, and the weak-spot tracker quickly surfaces the topics you guess at versus the ones you actually know. Spaced repetition then brings your weak topics back until they stick, while your strong ones fade out so you are not wasting time. When you are ready to test yourself for real, the mock exams are weighted exactly like your CISI paper, from 50 questions in an hour for the Introduction to 100 in two hours for Securities and Derivatives, with a full breakdown by element afterwards. A live readiness estimate summarises your weighted practice evidence so you can make a more informed booking decision.
See PasskeyPrep pricing and access: one payment covers 90 days from purchase, £59 for the paper you are sitting or £89 for all fourteen exams.
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 UK regulation, never copied from CISI's own materials. The qualification comes from CISI. We just help you walk in ready.
What about the CISI pass rate?
CISI does not publish official pass rates for its computer-based exams, so treat any specific percentage you see quoted online with caution. What matters more is that these papers are criterion referenced: there is no curve and no quota, so you are not competing against other candidates for a limited number of passes. Clear 70% and you pass, full stop. That is why repeated weighted, timed mock scores are more useful than a gut feeling. When the average sits comfortably above the pass mark across more than one paper, use it alongside your timetable and remaining weak areas when deciding whether to book.
Pick your exam and go deeper
- How to pass the Introduction to Securities & Investment
- How to pass the International Introduction to Securities & Investment
- How to pass UK Financial Regulation
- How to pass the Securities exam
- How to pass the Derivatives exam
- How to pass Global Securities Operations
- How to pass Investment, Risk & Taxation
- How to pass Financial Planning & Advice
- How to pass UK Regulation & Professional Integrity
- How to pass IAD Securities
- How to pass IAD Derivatives
- How to pass Risk in Financial Services
- How to pass Global Financial Compliance
- How to pass Combating Financial Crime
- How hard is the CISI exam, really?
- How to book your CISI exam
Frequently asked questions
What is the pass mark for CISI exams?
Every paper PasskeyPrep covers is marked at 70%. That is 35 out of 50 on the Introduction to Securities & Investment, and the same percentage on the longer Capital Markets papers. There is no negative marking, so always answer every question.
How long does it take to study for a CISI exam?
For the Introduction to Securities & Investment, around 60 to 80 hours is commonly quoted for someone new to the industry, which works out at a few weeks of steady evening study. The Capital Markets papers take longer because they are longer and deeper. What matters more than the hours is how you spend them: mostly answering questions, not re-reading.
Can I retake a CISI exam if I fail?
Yes. CISI lets you resit; you book again and pay the exam fee again. Strong mock results can reduce uncertainty but do not rule out a resit; use them alongside your timetable, confidence and remaining weak areas.
Do I still need the official CISI workbook?
We recommend it. PasskeyPrep is a practice and revision tool, not a replacement for the initial learning. The workbook builds the picture; PasskeyPrep is how you test and reinforce it until it sticks.
Which CISI exam should I take first?
For most people new to the industry, the Introduction to Securities & Investment is the natural starting point. If your role sits squarely in capital markets you may go straight into the Programme. Our guide to choosing your first exam covers the decision in detail.