CII Exams Explained: Units, Booking, Remote Invigilation, Cost and Results

R01 to R05 and the IF units of the Certificate in Insurance are on-screen multiple-choice (MCQ) exams with no fixed dates: you buy a unit, then book your own date in MyCII and sit it at a PSI test centre or by remote invigilation from a private room of your choice. The CII says MCQ exams “are available daily (subject to availability)”. Your result appears on screen at the end and in MyCII normally within two working days. Written units, such as R06, are the exception: they run on set dates a few times a year. A UK non-member pays £334 for R01 with the digital study text and one exam entry, and £200 for an Assessment only entry (exam entry, no study material), which in our reading is the option for a resit when you no longer need the study text. This guide covers how the exams run, the units and their pass marks, booking, remote invigilation, cost, results and resits. ProSyllabus is an independent study site. It is not affiliated with the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII), and nothing here is official. Every date, fee, rule and exam fact below is taken from the CII’s own pages and documents, read on 5 November 2026 unless another date is given; where we add our own reading or suggestion, we say so.

CII Assessment information, Qualification and Assessment rules (June 2026) and Results information, read 5 November 2026.

The CII’s assessment information page says its qualifications involve completing one or more units, each an individually assessed topic, and describes MCQ exams, written exams, coursework and mixed assessment (one coursework assignment plus an MCQ exam); its Results information page also covers dissertations. The R0 units R01 to R05 and the Certificate in Insurance units IF1 to IF9 are all MCQ exams; R06 is a written exam.

For an MCQ unit there is no sitting to register for. You buy the unit in the CII unit shop, and on the R01 page every purchase option includes an assessment entry: Enrolment only and Enrolment plus give 12 months of access to the study material and an exam voucher “valid for 18 months” from purchase; Assessment only is the entry without study material. Check your own unit’s purchase terms. You then book an available date yourself, in advance. For MCQ exams the CII’s assessment rules say you can only book a date “more than two days ahead of the current date, subject to availability”, and not beyond your enrolment period.

Under its MCQ heading, the assessment information page says study is based on set yearly periods: 1 January to 31 December for general insurance units, 1 September to 31 August for personal finance units, and 1 May to 30 April for mixed assessment and non-UK units. These yearly periods are not your own access or voucher dates: on the R01 page, study material access runs 12 months from enrolment and the exam voucher 18 months from purchase. The R01 examination guide is dated “for exams from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027”. The CII’s assessment rules point you to each unit’s syllabus and the updates on its unit page for what is tested and when legislative changes are assessed, so check those dates for your own unit, especially where tax or legislative changes affect it.

For MCQ units there are no CII exam dates to wait for. The Important exam deadlines page says MCQ exams “are available daily (subject to availability)”, booked through your MyCII dashboard. In our reading, that means you choose the day when you are ready, within your enrolment period, rather than plan around a sitting.

Written exams, which include R06 and units such as AF1, AF4, AF5, AF7, J02, J05 and J07, have fixed dates. These are the R06 Financial planning practice sittings the CII has confirmed for 2027:

R06 is different in another way too: its page describes a three-hour exam of two written case studies, and candidates receive the case studies two weeks before the sitting.

These are the six R0 units and the nine IF units with the exam each unit page describes. “Standard format” MCQs have four options and one correct answer; a “multiple response” question has four to six options with more than one correct, and you must pick all of them to gain the mark. Unit names link to our format guide where we have one.

Two things in that table catch people out. R05’s unit page gives a standard pass mark of 70%, while R01 to R04 give 65%, though all five are core units of the Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning. And R03 Personal taxation had the lowest 2025 pass rate of the R0 units, 59.61%. The Results information page sets the standard pass marks by type: 70% for Certificate and Award MCQ units, 65% for Diploma MCQ units, and 55% for Diploma and Advanced Diploma written units, except AF7 at 60%.

All exam bookings must start on the CII website. For an MCQ exam, first buy the unit (any enrolment option, or Assessment only), which puts an exam voucher in your account; the CII’s remote invigilation guide then gives these steps:

1. Log in to your MyCII dashboard and go to “Booking and results”.
2. Click “view unit” on the exam voucher for the unit you want to sit.
3. Click “Book exam”. You are sent to the PSI platform.
4. Follow the on-screen instructions to book your date and time. For a remote exam you can upload photo ID now or at check-in on the day.
5. Look for the confirmation email: for a remote exam it holds the link you use on the day.

For written exams such as R06, use the CII’s booking guidance and the closing dates on the Important exam deadlines page instead. For MCQ exams, two rules decide your earliest and latest dates: an MCQ exam must be booked more than two days ahead, and it cannot be after the end of your enrolment period. If you need help, the guide points you to CII Customer Service’s web chat.

The CII describes remote invigilation as the option “to sit multiple choice exams online in a suitable location of the candidate’s choice, using a PC or laptop with access to a webcam, instead of at a test centre.” The exam itself is the same; the rules around it differ.

In our reading, remote invigilation suits you if you have a quiet room you can clear and a reliable wired or strong Wi-Fi connection; the CII’s guide recommends an internet speed test before you book and on the exam day itself, and a system compatibility check before you book and again at least 48 hours before the exam. A test centre suits you if your home set-up is shared, unreliable, or only a tablet or Chromebook.

The exam entry is bought with the unit. For R01, Enrolment only (study text plus assessment entry) and Enrolment plus (adds revision aids such as the Knowledge Checker) include an assessment entry; Assessment only is an entry that, in the R01 page’s words, “does not include access to any study material”, which in our reading is the natural way to pay for a resit. Check the package contents for your own unit. On the R01 page, study material access lasts 12 months from enrolment and the exam voucher 18 months from purchase. These are the UK prices of each purchase option in the CII unit shop, read on 5 November 2026. For the Certificate in Insurance units and what membership saves, see our Cert CII guide.

For on-screen MCQ exams, the CII’s remote invigilation guide says results “will be shown on the screen at the end of the examination”, and the Results information page says they “will normally be available on MyCII within 2 UK business working days”. MyCII shows your score and the percentage of marks you gained on each learning outcome; the CII warns that you cannot work out your score by averaging those percentages, because learning outcomes are weighted. Results are never sent by post, phone or email.

A pass is about the standard, not a quota: the CII says it “does not operate a policy of setting a quota of candidates who will be passed.” Each correct MCQ answer earns one mark, and wrong answers lose nothing. Exam versions can differ slightly in difficulty, and the CII’s “Understanding your exam result” (read 25 October 2026) explains that for MCQ exams it works out in advance, and applies where necessary, an adjustment to the marks for each version, up or down, so the same pass standard holds. That is why the raw mark you need can differ slightly from the standard pass mark.

If you fail an MCQ unit, in our reading you resit by buying an Assessment only entry for that unit and booking a new date in the usual way. The pages we read set no waiting period between attempts, but the more-than-two-days booking rule still applies. MCQ exams are marked by computer with a pre-set pass mark. Re-checks and reviews of marking are limited to the assessments below, while a formal appeal can cover assessment results in any format:

If something on the day affected your MCQ exam, such as a technical fault or illness, the route is special consideration: tell the invigilator at the time and apply to online.exams@cii.co.uk within five working days.

Try three free R01 practice questions now:

The free questions come from the ProSyllabus CII R01 Essentials practice pack: independent practice questions, not CII specimen or exam questions. The CII’s own specimen examination, with its answer key, is in the R01 examination guide linked from the R01 unit page.