30-, 60-, and 90-day CIRE study plans built around the CIRO syllabus, official weighting, self-study guidance, and timed-practice discipline.
Treat CIRE as a workflow + judgment exam. Prep improves fastest when you use one repeatable loop:
Read -> turn it into rules -> drill scenarios -> review misses -> repeat.
Start timed drilling here: CIRE web practice. Use the full CIRE guide as your topic-by-topic coverage map between mixed sets.
CIRO’s current Guide for Studying makes three points that should control your plan:
That means a good CIRE plan is not “read everything evenly”. It is “learn the whole map, then overweight the parts where the exam actually lives”.
| Week | Focus (by weighting) | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Regulatory framework (10%) + Prospective relationships (10%) | Build the regulator map, onboarding logic, and who-can-do-what boundaries. |
| 2 | Scope of relationships (15%) + Conflicts and ethics (16%) | Build authority, suitability, and conflict judgment together; write short “first action” rules. |
| 3 | Products (19%) + Market integrity/execution/settlement (12%) | Do product-classification drills and trade-lifecycle drills side by side. |
| 4 | Complaints (5%) + Analysis (8%) + Mixed review | Clean up the lighter blocks, then shift into timed mixed sets and miss review. |
If you only remember one thing about CIRE weighting, remember this:
| Highest-value domains | Indicative questions |
|---|---|
| Products | 21 |
| Scope of client relationships | 17 |
| Conflicts and ethics | 16 |
| Market integrity, execution, and settlement | 13 |
| Regulatory framework | 11 |
| Prospective client relationships | 11 |
Those six domains make up almost the whole exam. The lower-weight blocks still matter, but they should not steal time from the core judgment stack.
| Weeks | Focus | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Regulatory framework | Learn the CSA vs CIRO map, the CIRO role inside the proficiency model, and where exam questions usually sit. |
| 2 | Prospective client relationships | Build the onboarding workflow and a defensible documentation checklist. |
| 3-4 | Scope of client relationships | Work on suitability triggers, account types, authority limits, and client-category logic. |
| 5 | Complaints and reporting | Build an intake -> classify -> document -> escalate workflow. |
| 6 | Market and company analysis | Learn interpretation and core concepts; avoid turning this into a trivia block. |
| 7 | Market integrity, execution, and settlement | Order handling, best-execution mindset, trade lifecycle, and integrity red flags. |
| 8 | Products, derivatives basics, and ethics | Finish product-fit and risk literacy, then move into mixed review. |
| Weeks | Focus | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | Regulatory framework | Build the regulator map and vocabulary; run short drills weekly. |
| 3 | Prospective relationships | Focus on disclosure, KYC completeness, and documentation discipline. |
| 4-5 | Scope of relationships | Drill suitability triggers, client constraints, and service-model differences. |
| 6 | Complaints and reporting | Build a complaint workflow and drill classification and escalation cues. |
| 7 | Market and company analysis | Learn the interpretation mindset; use small mixed sets. |
| 8 | Execution and settlement | Drill trade lifecycle and marketplace mechanics. |
| 9 | Products | Focus on managed products, mutual funds, other investments, and fit. |
| 10 | Conflicts and ethics | Identify, mitigate, disclose, and document. |
| 11-12 | Mixed review | Two mixed sets per week; review misses; tighten timing. |
For CIRE, most bad misses come from one of five causes:
wrong relationship because you misread what authority or service model existswrong product classification because you skipped the first “what is this?” stepwrong conduct answer because you focused on the product and missed the complaint, conflict, or ethics issuewrong execution answer because you ignored what happens after the recommendation or orderwrong timing because you knew the rule but not when the action had to happenWrite each miss note in one sentence: what the dominant issue was, what the compliant next step was, and what fact in the stem should have forced that answer.
| Official item | Best moment to use it |
|---|---|
| Syllabus | before you set the calendar and whenever you are unsure what can be tested |
| Guide for Studying | at the start and again halfway through, so your plan still matches CIRO’s self-study logic |
| Practice exam | once early for question feel, once late for pacing and weak-area diagnosis |
Your job in the last stretch is to remove avoidable misses and tighten timing.
Timing target: the official format is 110 questions in 2 hours, or about 65 seconds per question. That means your process has to become fast:
The CIRE question bank is large. Do not try to brute-force the whole pool.
Next: work through the full CIRE guide and use this plan to decide which chapters deserve the next timed block.