BrokerExamThe Level 1 exam is three hours and 100 multiple-choice questions, on RIBO’s own exam page as it stood on September 3, 2026. The page prints a further 15 piloted questions that do not count towards your grade, and sets the pass mark at “at least 75%, which is 75 out of 100”. The page counts only multiple-choice questions, which is what says there is no written or short-answer section on it. The 100 graded questions divide into General Insurance and Industry Knowledge 25, Personal Lines Automobile 25, Personal Lines Habitational 25, Commercial Lines 20 and Travel Health 5.
Separate documents decide separate parts of the paper. The exam page sets the counts and the pass mark, the competency profile and blueprint set the weights, and RIBO’s Exam Rules set the conditions you sit it under. This page puts them together.
100 graded plus 15 pilots, so 115 in the room
RIBO’s exam page prints the three numbers separately and does not add them up:
The three-hour exam consists of 100 multiple-choice questions
There are 15 piloted questions, which will not count towards your overall grade.
A passing grade requires at least 75%, which is 75 out of 100.
Only one arrangement of those numbers is consistent. A denominator of 100 in the pass mark can only be the graded set, which leaves the 15 pilots outside it, so the paper you actually work through is 115 questions long and 100 of them decide the result. RIBO’s blueprint page says the pilots are “not scored and indistinguishable from regular exam questions”, so there is nothing to spot and every question is written as though it counts.
Budget the clock against 115, not 100. Three hours over 115 questions leaves a little under 94 seconds each, and a candidate pacing to the graded hundred arrives at the end with questions left and no time to spend on them.
Three weightings, not one
The Level 1 Entry Level Broker Competency Profile and Blueprint is the document the exam page points at for detail, and its blueprint page states its own job:
The Exam blueprint identifies both the set of competencies and content tested, and the relative weight on the test given on each.
It sets three weightings over the same paper. The blueprint carries the note “New Blue Print will become effective January 1, 2025”, and RIBO’s 2024/2025 Annual Report records that it launched the updated Level 1 exam on that date.
Content domain, which is the split the exam page prints as question counts:
| Content domain | Weight |
|---|---|
| General Insurance and Industry Knowledge | 25% |
| Personal Lines Automobile | 25% |
| Personal Lines Habitational | 25% |
| Commercial Lines | 20% |
| Travel | 5% |
Competency domain, which is the ten competencies of the profile, weighted as ranges rather than fixed shares:
| Competency domain | Weight |
|---|---|
| Insurance Product and Industry Knowledge | 38-42% |
| Risk Identification, Assessment, and Classification | 14-17% |
| Consulting and Advising | 9-11% |
| Legal and Regulatory Compliance | 8-10% |
| Professionalism, Integrity, and Ethics | 8-10% |
| Relationship Management | 3-5% |
| Claim Services | 3-5% |
| Critical and Analytical Thinking | 3-5% |
| Information Management | 3-5% |
| Continuous Learning and Development | 3-5% |
Cognitive domain, which is how deep the questions go: Knowledge 40-45%, Comprehension 40-45%, Application 15-20%. What that means for how hard the paper feels is worked through in how hard is the RIBO Level 1 exam.
The two domains describe the same 100 questions from different angles. A question about a habitational co-insurance clause is one of the 25 habitational questions in the content domain and sits under Insurance Product and Industry Knowledge, or under Critical and Analytical Thinking, in the competency one.
What the questions are drawn from
The exam page names the subjects in one sentence:
The exam will test 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.
Read the qualifier: “including but not limited to” means RIBO publishes no closed list of examinable material. The documents behind that sentence, and how much of each matters, are set out in what to study for the RIBO Level 1 exam.
The smallest section is the one RIBO’s exam page calls Travel Health and the blueprint calls Travel. It is easy to skip at five questions, and the exam page attaches a consequence to it that the other four sections do not have: “Candidates who pass the current Level 1 Examination may sell Travel Health Insurance.”
The one document in the room with you
You bring nothing in. The Exam Rules, last updated January 15, 2025, prohibit “physical or digital resources, including but not limited to, books, notes, cell phones, smartwatches, tablets, and headphones” at rule 2.2, and rule 2.5 allows only “tools and resources provided within the examination interface”.
What the interface gives you is RIBO’s Consolidated Examinee Resource, 167 pages holding OAP 1, By-Laws No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, the RIB Act and O. Reg. 308/98, 990 and 991. Downloaded again on September 3, 2026, the file RIBO serves carries a publication date of May 1, 2026 on its first page while its file name still says September 18, 2024, so the file name is no guide to the edition. Nothing else comes into the room with you, and is the RIBO Level 1 exam open book covers what that one document does and does not let you do.
What RIBO does not publish about the build
Some of what candidates believe about the build has no published source behind it. Three gaps in particular are worth knowing before you plan around a number you found somewhere else.
RIBO publishes no question bank, retired or otherwise, beyond the 79 sample questions in its own sample-questions PDF, downloaded again on September 3, 2026. That PDF tells you on its second page that performance on it will not predict success on the exam.
How the 15 pilots are chosen and where they land is unpublished. Nothing says they are spread evenly across the sections, so a section can carry more of them than its share.
A pass rate for the current exam on its own does not exist either. RIBO’s 2024/2025 Annual Report covers the Level 1 exam and the two equivalency exams in one figure, 51%, and its 2023/2024 report does the same, as set out in the pass rate year by year.
An all-multiple-choice paper cannot be remarked
Rule 2.19 of the Exam Rules restricts remarking to exams that “contain constructed questions”, which this one does not, so a 74 is final on the day it is issued and what happens after a failed attempt covers the rewrite rules that follow.