Series 28 Pass Rate 2026: What FINRA Publishes

There is no published pass rate for the Series 28. FINRA does not release one for this exam, nor for any qualification exam in its program. The single exception is the Securities Industry Essentials exam — the entry-level test anyone can sit without a firm behind them — which runs at roughly 74 percent. Every exam above the SIE, the Series 28 included, is a blank. That is a policy choice, not an oversight: FINRA scores every candidate who sits this exam, and publishes registration, disciplinary and enforcement totals annually in the FINRA Industry Snapshot, whose 2026 edition carries no exam pass rates. What FINRA does publish for the Series 28 is the part that decides your result — the item count, the passing standard, the clock, the fee, and the allocation of questions across four job functions.

How the Series 28 is scored

FINRA prints two numbers that look like the same thing and are not. The at-a-glance box on the exam page lists a passing score of 69 with no percent sign. The content outline resolves it: "The passing score for this exam is 69%." That is a real percentage of real questions, not a scaled score of the kind vendor certifications report on a 100-to-1000 band, where the stated bar has no fixed relationship to items answered correctly. On the Series 28, 69 percent means 69 percent.

The usual footnote to that statement is that the percentage applies to scored questions only, because most exam sponsors salt the form with unscored pretest items. FINRA's exam directory warns of it: "Some exams have additional unscored (pretest) questions. Refer to each exam content outline for more information." For the Series 28, the outline says the opposite of what you would expect: "Each candidate's exam consists of a total of 95 items." No padding. Compare the SIE, whose outline states each candidate gets 5 unidentified pretest items on top of 75 scored, for 80 items on screen. On the Series 28, the number on screen is the number that counts.

So the arithmetic is unusually clean. Sixty-nine percent of 95 is 65.55, and you cannot answer a fraction of an item, so the bar is 66 correct out of 95. You can miss 29. FINRA also states the standard is absolute and "independent of the performance of candidates taking the exam" — the real reason a pass rate would not help you even if one existed. There is no curve to beat, only a fixed number: 66.

What FINRA publishes	Series 28
Scored questions	95, multiple choice
Unscored pretest items	None — the outline puts each candidate's exam at "a total of 95 items"
Time	2 hours; the appointment adds 30 minutes for the tutorial and survey
Passing score	69% — 66 of 95 items
Fee	$195
Corequisites	None. "The Series 28 does not have a corequisite exam" — the SIE is not required
Eligibility	No prerequisite exam, but you must be sponsored by a FINRA or other SRO member firm, which files a Form U4 requesting the FI position
Published pass rate	None

The corequisite line is worth reading twice. Representative-level exams pair with the SIE, and most principal-level exams sit on top of a representative-level registration. The Series 28 does neither. FINRA's eligibility text names exactly one gate, and it is sponsorship: you cannot walk in off the street, but need not have passed anything else first.

Series 27 or Series 28: which one does your firm need?

FINRA answers this directly, and the dividing line is net capital, not job title. Both exams qualify the individual who prepares and maintains the member's books and records. In FINRA's words: "Broker-dealers that have a minimum net capital requirement of $250,000 and municipal securities brokers that have a minimum net capital requirement of $150,000 under SEC Rule 15c3-1 must pass the Series 27 exam. All other broker-dealers are permitted to take the Series 28 exam, which is an abbreviated version of the Series 27."

That tracks whether the firm carries customer accounts or holds customer funds and securities. FINRA describes the Series 28 principal's covered activities as back office operations, preparation and maintenance of the firm's books and records, and compliance with the financial responsibility rules applying to fully disclosed broker-dealers that do not hold customer funds and securities and do not carry customer accounts. Check your firm's minimum net capital requirement before you enroll — that number, not the exam's reputation, decides which one you sit.

Why the figures online disagree

Four things generate the percentages you see.

• The passing score gets recycled as a pass rate. FINRA prints "Passing Score 69" in a box with no percent sign, and a "69% pass rate" turns up downstream. One is the bar; the other would be the share of people clearing it.
• Series 27 numbers get pinned to the Series 28. The exams share a subject, a rule — FINRA Rule 1220(a)(4) — and a job function, and FINRA itself calls one an abbreviated version of the other. Figures migrate between the two, and neither has a real one.
• The candidate pool is small and closed. Only sponsored candidates whose firms have requested the FI position on a Form U4 can sit this exam, so the forum-poll method that manufactures rates for consumer exams has nothing to work with.
• Training providers quote their own cohorts. A pass rate from a prep course is a statement about the people who bought that course, not a property of the exam.

What is actually on the exam, and what sinks candidates

FINRA publishes the allocation across four job functions as item counts, not percentages. The percentages below are those counts divided by 95.

Job function	Items	Share
F1 — Financial Reporting	16	17%
F2 — Operations, General Securities Industry Regulations, and Preservation of Books and Records	30	32%
F3 — Net Capital	31	33%
F4 — Customer Protection, Funding and Cash Management	18	19%
Total	95	100%

Run the pass bar against that table and one conclusion is forced. Net capital is 31 items and the bar is 66. A candidate who answered every other item correctly — all 16 on financial reporting, all 30 on operations and books and records, all 18 on customer protection — but nothing on net capital finishes on 64. A fail by two items, with a perfect score on two thirds of the exam. You cannot pass the Series 28 without doing net capital arithmetic.

The outline is specific: minimum requirements for introducing versus carrying firms, basic versus alternative method, aggregate indebtedness, sorting allowable from non-allowable assets on a trial balance, adjustments to net worth, and haircut deductions by product — all keyed to SEC Rule 15c3-1. Function 4 adds 18 items of rules-with-numbers: the claim for exemption under the Customer Protection Rule at Rule 15c3-3(k), Regulation T margin, day-trading requirements, and reconciliation of processing accounts. Together, F3 and F4 are 49 of the 95 items, and they are the ones candidates at introducing firms underestimate, because "we do not hold customer funds" gets misread as "customer protection is not on my exam." Function 1 is smaller but no softer: FOCUS filing and the annual report requirements under SEC Rule 17a-5.

Two mechanics are worth planning around. The test center supplies the calculator and whiteboard, you may not bring your own, and no reference material is permitted. And FINRA states there is no penalty for guessing, so a blank is strictly worse than a guess — at 120 minutes for 95 items you have about 76 seconds each, which is why blanks happen.

The bottom line

The Series 28 pass rate does not exist, and the number that replaces it is 66 — the items you need correct out of 95, against a standard FINRA sets in advance and does not move with the rest of the room. Sponsorship is the only gate to the seat: no SIE, no representative-level registration, no prerequisite exam. Two hours, $195, four job functions, and a third of the paper resting on Rule 15c3-1. If your firm's minimum net capital requirement is $250,000, or $150,000 as a municipal securities broker, you want the Series 27 instead.

The useful preparation is not chasing a statistic nobody has. It is finding out how many of your 29 permitted misses are currently going to net capital and customer protection, then closing that gap before you book the seat — which is what a free Series 28 practice exam is for.