BrokerExamRIBO publishes a pass rate, and for the 2024/2025 reporting year it is 51%. That is the number to plan against, with the qualification RIBO prints beside it: the figure counts the two equivalency exams along with the Level 1 exam itself, so it is a blended rate rather than a clean Level 1 one. Roughly half the sittings in that count did not pass, and RIBO’s exam page puts the pass mark at 75 out of 100.
The published pass rate is 51%
RIBO’s 2024/2025 Annual Report, under Exam Trends and Considerations, states:
Pass rates for the Level 1 exam have remained stable for the past three years at 51%. Of note, the number of exam writers has increased by 128% over the past six years.
The report’s Exam Pass Rate Summary table gives the counts behind that year’s figure: 6,185 Level 1 entry-level exams written, 3,201 passed, a 51% pass rate.
The table carries its own footnote, and RIBO puts the caveat in twice. The footnote says “Level 1 pass rates include equivalency exam pass rates”, and the sentence introducing the table is more specific: the rate for the Entry Level 1 Exam “includes the Level 1 Exam as well as the RIB Act, Regulations, and By-laws Equivalency Exam and the RIBO Ontario Automobile Equivalency Exams”. Three different exams share the one percentage, and the report does not break them out. So 51% is the published figure, and it is a blend rather than a Level 1 result on its own.
The same paragraph carries a second number. A 128% rise in writers over six years, with the pass rate steady at 51% across the last three of them, means the rate held while the candidate pool more than doubled.
Each year’s figure, and the 46% RIBO published for the Level 1 exam on its own before it stopped separating the two, are set out in the RIBO Level 1 pass rate year by year.
What you have to clear on the day
RIBO’s Level 1 exam page, as of August 31, 2026, sets the shape of the paper:
The three-hour exam consists of 100 multiple-choice questions
Those questions are split 25 general insurance and industry knowledge, 25 personal lines habitational, 25 personal lines automobile, 20 commercial lines, and 5 travel health. The page adds that “There are 15 piloted questions, which will not count towards your overall grade”, and sets the bar at “at least 75%, which is 75 out of 100.”
RIBO lists those three numbers separately, and they fit together one way. A pass mark printed as 75 out of 100 reconciles with 100 of the questions being graded and no other count, so the 15 piloted ones sit on top of that hundred: you answer 115 questions in three hours, and 100 of them are scored. Pace yourself to 115 and you have about a minute and a half each. Pace to 100 and you will run short at the end, on questions you could have answered.
Three quarters is a high bar for a multiple-choice paper. There is no curve and no partial credit, so 74 out of 100 is a fail.
The exam tests recall and understanding more than judgment
RIBO’s Level 1 Exam Curriculum Guide, revised December 3, 2024, is written for education providers, and it is the clearest published statement of how deep the questions go:
The RIBO Level 1 exam focuses on the lower-order cognitive levels
The guide names those levels as Remembering, Understanding and Applying, and says higher-order levels such as Analyzing or Creating “are not included because they are more appropriate for advance roles where deeper expertise and strategic thinking are required.”
The blueprint that took effect January 1, 2025 puts numbers on the same idea. Its cognitive domain splits the paper into Knowledge at 40 to 45%, Comprehension at 40 to 45%, and Application at 15 to 20%. Between 80 and 90% of the exam is therefore recall and understanding of specific published material, and only a sixth or so asks you to work a scenario.
Nothing on the paper asks for clever reasoning, so the exam is not hard the way a case-study exam is hard. The same weighting takes away the fallback: if you have not read the text a question is drawn from, no amount of insurance instinct recovers the mark.
Where the difficulty actually sits
Most of the work is in how much ground the exam covers. RIBO’s exam page says it tests “a range of subjects, including but not limited to, legislation such as the RIB Act, Regulations, RIBO By-laws, as well as, insurance product knowledge include automobile, habitational, travel health, and general policies”. The one reference you get during the exam, RIBO’s 167-page Consolidated Examinee Resource, is described in full in is the RIBO Level 1 exam open book, and it is not a document you can read for the first time under time pressure.
The second difficulty is calibration. RIBO’s official sample-questions PDF, the only practice material it publishes, tells candidates on its own second page that “Your performance on these sample questions will NOT predict your success or failure on the exam”, and that “The sampling of questions is not balanced to the Level 1 exam blueprint”. So the one set of real retired questions available to you is explicitly not a readiness test. Whatever else you practise with, you are judging your own readiness on material RIBO did not write.
The third is the small sections. Travel health is 5 questions and commercial lines is 20, which is little enough to tempt you into skipping them and enough to decide a 73 from a 76.
RIBO publishes no study-hours guidance
There is no recommended preparation time on the exam page, in the blueprint, or in the curriculum guide, and the guide is addressed to course providers rather than to candidates. Hour counts that circulate in candidate threads are individuals describing what they personally did, which is a useful signal that people find the exam substantial and no evidence at all of what you will need.
What RIBO does publish is the weighting. The content split tells you where the marks are: general and industry knowledge, habitational and automobile carry 25 questions each, so three quarters of the paper sits in those three. The cognitive split tells you what kind of study earns them: with 80 to 90% of questions at the Knowledge and Comprehension levels, reading the source documents pays better than reading summaries of them, because the questions are drawn from the wording.
The curriculum guide’s own advice to course builders transfers cleanly to a study plan. For high-weight domains it tells providers to include “multiple learning activities, in-depth explanations, and scenario-based learning”, and for low-weight ones to focus “on providing a solid conceptual foundation without going into excessive detail”. Divide your time the way RIBO tells the schools to divide the syllabus, then find out where you actually stand: the diagnostic here scores you by section against the same weighting, which is a faster way to size the work ahead than counting hours.
If the result already came back a fail
The rules for the next attempt are their own subject: a two-week wait, two attempts per exam provider, an 8-month lockout after a second fail with the same one, and no remark on a fully multiple-choice paper. Those are set out in what to do after failing the RIBO Level 1.