Common questions about the FINRA Series 28 exam, including route fit versus Series 27, firm scope, eligibility, and practical study strategy.
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Series 28 is the Introducing Broker-Dealer Financial and Operations Principal Qualification Examination. FINRA describes it as the abbreviated version of Series 27 for a firm that does not carry customer accounts or hold customer funds or securities.
Series 27 is the broader FINOP lane. Series 28 is the narrower introducing-firm version. That route distinction matters before you start studying, because the exam is built around a smaller operational perimeter.
No. As of April 13, 2026, FINRA states that Series 28 does not have a corequisite exam. The key route question is firm scope, not co-requisite structure.
It tests introducing-broker FINOP competence across financial reporting, operations and records, net capital, and the narrower customer-protection, funding, and cash-management obligations of a firm that does not carry accounts or customer assets.
It is testing whether you can think like a limited-scope FINOP. The stronger answer usually identifies what must be classified, calculated, filed, preserved, or restricted inside the introducing-firm perimeter.
Net Capital and Operations/Books and Records deserve the most time because together they make up most of the exam and generate the densest operational misses.
Treating it like generic Series 27 lite. The better approach is to keep asking what changes because the firm is an introducing broker-dealer that does not carry customer accounts or assets.
Tag each miss by function first: reporting purpose, operations workflow, capital classification, customer-protection boundary, or funding judgment. That makes the second pass much cleaner.
Switch once you can quickly identify whether the stem is really a reporting, operations, capital, or customer-protection question. Mixed sets matter because weak candidates keep confusing those buckets under time pressure.