BrokerExamThere is no RIBO textbook. RIBO’s Level 1 exam page, as of August 31, 2026, says the courses come from somewhere else: “RIBO doesn’t offer any courses but organizations like the Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario (IBAO) or the Insurance Institute of Ontario (IIO) have some that you can take.” No course book, no publisher, no edition number to hunt for. What RIBO does publish is four documents and a list of the law, all of it free, and that is enough to build a study plan from.
What RIBO’s exam page actually hands you
The exam page has a Self Study section, and it is candid about its own limits:
We provide high-level policies and resources to study and prepare for the exam. The list is not exhaustive. Candidates should refer to the Level 1 Entry Level Broker Competency Profile and Blueprint for a detailed list of study materials under the Supporting Knowledge column.
So the exam page points at the syllabus rather than being one. The four free documents this guide works through are all published by RIBO and downloadable from ribo.com: the competency profile and blueprint, the curriculum guide, the sample questions, and the Consolidated Examinee Resource. Neither the exam page nor the Exam Rules sets a number of study hours or makes a course a condition of writing: the Exam Rules (last updated January 15, 2025) set eligibility in section 1 around identification, name matching and registration, and rule 1.5 names the Insurance Institute of Canada (which RIBO’s exam page also calls the Insurance Institute of Ontario) and IBAO as “the only two RIBO approved exam service providers”.
The competency profile and blueprint
This is the closest thing to an official syllabus. It sets out ten competencies, each with themes, behavioural examples and a Supporting Knowledge column, and its introduction says who it is for: “It should also help applicants who choose self-study in preparation for their examination.”
The Supporting Knowledge column is where the specifics live. For automobile it lists the endorsements by number, “Endorsements (5, 16, 17, 19, 19a, 20, 23a, 27, 28, 28a, 39, 40, 43, 44, 47, 49, conviction protector)”. For habitational it asks for “Co-insurance clauses, penalties, and the concepts that it applies to (e.g., basic calculations)”. Under critical thinking it names the arithmetic outright: “calculating co-insurance, Section 6 and 7 in Ontario Automobile Policy (OAP 1)”. Read as a checklist, that column tells you what a topic means in exam terms.
The last content page, page 22 of 23 with only the back cover after it, carries the blueprint, which became effective January 1, 2025 and weights the exam three different ways.
Content: General Insurance and Industry Knowledge 25%, Personal Lines Automobile 25%, Personal Lines Habitational 25%, Commercial Lines 20%, Travel 5%. Those line up with the question counts on the exam page as of August 31, 2026: 25, 25, 25, 20 and 5 out of 100.
Competency: Insurance Product and Industry Knowledge takes 38 to 42% on its own. Risk Identification, Assessment, and Classification takes 14 to 17%, Consulting and Advising 9 to 11%, Legal and Regulatory Compliance 8 to 10%, Professionalism, Integrity, and Ethics 8 to 10%. The remaining five competencies take 3 to 5% each.
Cognitive: Knowledge 40 to 45%, Comprehension 40 to 45%, Application 15 to 20%. Recall on its own covers under half the paper, and fifteen to twenty of the hundred questions ask you to apply a rule to a situation rather than state it.
The curriculum guide
Revised December 3, 2024, and written for educators: it “is designed to support education providers in creating and aligning their curriculum with the RIBO Level 1 Competency Profile and Blueprint framework”. A self-studier still gets one thing from it, which is RIBO’s own instruction on how to read the weights:
The exam blueprint serves as a roadmap for education providers, indicating the weight and importance of each domain in the exam. The percentage breakdown of each competency domain highlights areas that require more in-depth coverage and those where less emphasis might be sufficient.
For a self-studier that is the same instruction applied to study time rather than to course design.
The 79 sample questions
The sample questions PDF runs 31 pages and holds 79 questions. RIBO describes them as “retired exam questions that were previously used on RIBO examinations”, and each one comes with its content domain, competency and cognitive level attached. RIBO also attaches two warnings, and both are worth taking literally:
Your performance on these sample questions will NOT predict your success or failure on the exam.
The sampling of questions is not balanced to the Level 1 exam blueprint, but features questions that test the different content domains, competencies, and cognitive levels covered in the exam.
The imbalance is easy to measure. Of the 79 questions, 48 are labelled General Insurance and Industry Knowledge, 19 Personal Lines Habitational, 7 Commercial Lines and 5 Personal Lines Automobile. None are travel health. On the real paper, automobile is 25 questions and travel health is 5. By cognitive level the set runs 28 Knowledge, 38 Comprehension and 13 Application.
Use the set for question shape: the “which is NOT” stems, the single stem that lists conditions and asks which one is the exception, the scenarios that end in a broker deciding something. Do not use it to estimate your readiness, and expect the exam to look plainer than the PDF: “The Review Information shown after each question is not provided in the exam.”
The Consolidated Examinee Resource
This is the one reference you get during the exam, delivered through the exam platform. The edition RIBO serves as of August 31, 2026 carries a publication date of May 1, 2026 and runs 167 pages. It holds OAP 1, By-Laws No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, the RIB Act, and O. Reg. 308/98, 990 and 991. Its own cover page sets the terms:
The document provided herein consolidates various policies and regulations for the convenience of examinees during the exam.
And, a paragraph later, that RIBO “recommends verifying details with the relevant regulatory sources”. It is a convenience copy of eight instruments, not an annotated study edition, so learning where each one starts in it is part of the preparation. What you may bring alongside it is a separate question, covered in is the RIBO Level 1 exam open book.
The law the questions come from
RIBO’s self-study line names the primary sources: OAP 1, RIBO By-Laws No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, the RIB Act, and Ontario Regulation 989, 990 and 991. They are very different lengths.
The RIB Act is the licensing statute, and its definitions in section 1 do real work: the definition of “insurance broker” turns on dealing “directly with the public” for “compensation, commission or other thing of value”, and sample question 52 is built on exactly that wording.
O. Reg. 991 is the one to read closely. It carries the code of conduct at section 14, a numbered list of duties running from integrity and competence through confidentiality to cooperating in a RIBO investigation, and the definition of misconduct at section 15, which covers rebating, inducements, incomplete policy comparisons and carrying on business under an unregistered name. Sample questions 20 and 33 name the regulation directly.
The other two regulations are short. O. Reg. 990 is a single section, exempting members in good standing of the Risk Management Consultants of Ontario who provide only risk management consulting. O. Reg. 308/98 is two sections on the composition of Council: nine members elected by the membership, four appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council.
Ontario Regulation 989 also appears on RIBO’s self-study list, and there is nothing to read. It was revoked in whole by O. Reg. 308/98, s. 2, filed June 19, 1998, and the Examinee Resource carries 308/98 in its place. This site records the same conclusion under not here, and why.
The three by-laws divide up cleanly, and each says on its own cover what it is for. By-Law No. 1: “A by-law relating generally to the conduct of the affairs of” RIBO. By-Law No. 2: “A by-law relating to the nomination and election of Directors”. By-Law No. 3: “A by-law relating to Licensees”, and that is the one candidates get tested on, covering registration and renewal, classes of registration, principal brokers and continuing education. Sample questions 27 and 45 both name it.
On this site, the RIB Act and the three regulations are printed in full with an anchor on every section, so a citation lands on the provision. OAP 1 and the by-laws are listed with links to RIBO’s own published documents, because that wording is not ours to reproduce.
What you pay for
Free: the four RIBO PDFs, all downloadable from ribo.com. The statutes and regulations on Ontario’s e-Laws. The legislation library here, and the free practice questions, which follow the blueprint’s five sections.
Not free: the exam. RIBO’s fees page lists $325 per attempt as of August 31, 2026, with fees “payable directly to the exam provider”. Courses are not free either, and they are optional. RIBO runs none, and names IBAO and the Insurance Institute as organizations that do, without ranking them.
If the plan has to come out of free material, the blueprint sets the order. General insurance, automobile and habitational carry 25 questions each, so they take the bulk of the time. Commercial follows at 20. Travel health is 5 questions and comes last. Within each section the blueprint’s Supporting Knowledge column lists what to cover, and the legislation library here carries the RIB Act and the regulations it points at.