Everything You Need To Know Before Taking HKSI Examination

HKSI cover from paper 1 to paper 16. Please refer to latest SFC Guidlines on Competence for details. You may also reference to “Test of Competence for Corporate Applicant“

You may download the official study guide once you have enrolled the exam at HKSI. Click here to download the examination handbook.

For E-Study Manual, it can be downloaded at HKSI Online Enrollment System

Or you can purchase them at HKSI physically at 17/F, Cambridge House, Taikoo Place, 979 King’s Rd, Quarry Bay

You may enroll HKSI Licensing Examination for Securities and Futures Intermediaries at HKSI official site here

The exam is not easy and pass rate is often less than 50%. Refer to the latest pass rate for each of the paper here – Pass Rate for the LE in Hong Kong.

As you may aware, all the examinations in HKSI come in Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) format. But you might not know that the MC questions appear very differently to what you have seen from the official HKSI practice questions. The practice questions in the HKSI official website are relatively easy. In reality, the real examination MC questions appear in a way that you have multiple options to choose from and you’re required to select the right answer with examples as below:

A. I & II

B. II & III

C. I & II & III

D. II & III & IV

This is a lot more difficult than what you might imagine as the method of elimination will not work well in such case.

You can refer to HKSI Past Questions & Answere here

There are no grades but only pass or fail. However, there is Oustanding Achievers in each month. You can refer to the list here – HKSI LE Exam Outstanding Achievers

Yes you can take LE exam in:

China

Taiwan

Macau

Yes, you will see both Chinese & English practice questions at the same time and you can refer to the HKSI Examination Simulator

You may continue your study with HKSI continuous learning

No. Hong Kong & China maintain different licensing exam system. For China version you can refer >> Here << (Chinese version only)

You can buy them at HKSI or you may download it for free when you have enrolled the exam. Click here to get the latest version.

Click here to start HKSI LE exam free pratice questions (no registration required)

The simple answer is no. While you might be very experienced in your field, the examination is designed in a way that even fresh graduates might score a distinction. A lot of the content requires memorization and, in some questions, figures and exact numbers will be tested. For some papers which focuses on regulatory guidelines, the questions are set in a way very tricky that all answer choices look very similar. If you have not done a lot of preparation in memorizing the regulations, you will find it very difficult to differentiate the answers.

What is the passing rate

HKSI reveals the passing rate for a different paper. It is around 50% passing rate for most of the exams. You may refer to the latest passing rate here:

HKSI Licensing Examination pass rate

We have mentioned enough background and examination format. For what our readers concerns the most is how you can save your time and maximize your efficiency in the preparation.

Studying the HKSI official study manuals can be one of the ways given you have enough time. Unless you have already taken the exam before, otherwise, it is rather difficult for you to know what sort of questions and area will be tested. Per our years of experience, roughly 30-40% of the questions require memorization on either figures or keywords. The exam is designed in a way that it is very confusing to most of the candidate who have just read the study manuals a couple of times.

While it is different from candidate to candidate, we recommend spending at least 120 hours of time for each paper of study.

Questions that require common sense in the HKSI LE exams are not very common. As mentioned earlier, at least 30-40% of the questions require memorization of figures and keywords. Practical questions and situational questions would still test a candidate experience and knowledge in understanding the core concepts of the paper.
After all, HKSI strives to maintain the reputation of their exams paper. Therefore, they will not let candidate to be able to pass the examination without reading the study materials especially those important guidelines and figures.

There are some candidates who used to spend their time in study group and forum for exchange idea and information about the examinations. It is not a very bad idea if you have more than sufficient time for your preparation. However, if you have limited and would like to complete this examination as soon as possible, the short-cut way is to read through the study material and do our quizzes. This is the fastest and efficient way to grasp the key points of the HKSI examinations in order to pass the examinations.

For you additional information, we normally do not recommend candidates to acquire information from the study group and forum. It is because the information there could be very likely outdated and they are not verified. Especially the HKSI continuously update its study guide. The information in this study group and forum could be outdated which induce you to give a wrong answer during the examination.

There is a lot of hints and tricky areas in the question sets. We strongly recommend you to read the question twice before you look into the answer. Very often, the statement alone is correct but it can be a wrong answer as the question is not correlated to the answer.

Common sense it might seem, but many candidates have not allocated a sufficient amount of time to study. Do take at least 5 sets of quizzes and hit 70% of correctness before you take the examination. While the amount of time required varies for different candidates, do make sure you have covered all the topics in the exam

By now, you should know that taking practice questions is important. If you ask me for the best tip I can offer, it will be to think from the SFC’s (the regulator’s) perspective when answering each question. Why?

The first thing you need to understand is that the HKSI is authorized and empowered by the SFC to run the HKSI exams. The goal is to train professionals like you, who, after taking the exam, will be able to safeguard the reputation of the HKSI financial market. If in doubt, always imagine yourself as the regulator, and you will have a clear lens for answering the questions.