FINRA Series 24 General Securities Principal Exam

The Series 24, the General Securities Principal Qualification Examination, is the FINRA exam for entry-level general securities principals: the people who supervise a broker-dealer's securities business, including underwriting, trading and market making, advertising and overall compliance with financial responsibilities. FINRA states that the general securities principal qualification does not cover municipal securities or options. To take it, a candidate must be associated with and sponsored by a FINRA member firm or another applicable self-regulatory organization member firm. To hold a principal registration the candidate must also pass corequisite exams: the Securities Industry Essentials (SIE) exam plus a representative-level exam (the Series 7, 57, 79, 82, or 86 and 87), or the Supervisory Analysts Exam (Series 16); with the SIE and the Series 7 the registration is General Securities Principal. FINRA states the exam has 150 multiple-choice items in 3 hours and 45 minutes, with a passing score of 70. The items are spread over five major job functions in FINRA's Series 24 Content Outline: supervision of registration of the broker-dealer and personnel management activities (9 items), of general broker-dealer activities (45), of retail and institutional customer-related activities (32), of trading and market making activities (32), and of investment banking and research (32). Under the content outline each candidate also receives 10 unidentified pretest items that do not count, 160 in all; there is no penalty for guessing, scores are equated to a common scale, and no reference materials are allowed. FINRA's Series 24 page and content outline are the authority.