Series 99 at a glance (FINRA)
- Scored items: 50
- Unscored pretest items: 5 (55 total)
- Time: 1 hour 30 minutes (90 minutes)
- Format: Multiple choice
- Passing score: 68
- Cost: $60
- Corequisite: SIE
Note: FINRA includes unscored pretest items for question development. You won’t know which items are unscored, so treat every item as scored.
What Series 99 tests (job functions)
Series 99 is organized by two major functions:
- F1 — Knowledge Associated with the Securities Industry and Broker-Dealer Operations — 70% (35 items)
- F2 — Professional Conduct and Ethical Considerations — 30% (15 items)
Scope (permitted activities, high level)
FINRA describes covered activities/products for Operations Professionals as including:
- customer on-boarding (customer account data and document maintenance)
- collection, maintenance, reinvestment (sweeps) and disbursement of funds
- receipt and delivery of securities and funds; account transfers
- bank, custody, depository and firm account management and reconciliation
- settlement, fail control, buy-ins, segregation, possession and control
- trade confirmations and account statements
- margin
- stock loan / securities lending
- prime brokerage (services to other broker-dealers and financial institutions)
- approval of pricing models used for valuations
- financial control, including general ledger and treasury
- contributing to the process of preparing and filing financial regulatory reports
- defining and approving business requirements for sales/trading systems and validation that they meet those requirements
- defining and approving business security requirements/policies for IT systems and data connected to covered functions
- defining and approving information entitlement policies connected to covered functions
- posting entries to a firm’s books and records connected to covered functions to ensure integrity and compliance (high level)
Eligibility (important)
Series 99 requires firm sponsorship. You must be associated with a FINRA member firm (or other applicable SRO member firm) to enroll and test.
The SIE is a corequisite. To obtain the Operations Professional registration, candidates must pass SIE + Series 99 (subject to firm registration processes and FINRA rules).
Series 99 exception pathway (FINRA)
FINRA states that if you hold (or recently held) certain “eligible registrations,” you may be permitted to qualify as an Operations Professional without taking Series 99. See the Series 99 FAQ » for the list and key conditions (high level).
✅ Next: work through the Series 99 syllabus » and then drill workflows in Practice ».