FinanceOctober 9, 202611 min read

Series 7 Content Outline 2026: One Function Is 91 of 125 Questions

Function 3 - informing, recommending and keeping records - is 91 of the 125 scored questions, and every product family lives inside it. Opening accounts is 11 items; seeking business is 9.

  • 130 (125 scored)Questions
  • 3h 45mTime
  • 4Sections
  • YesWeights published
  • Scaled 72Pass mark
  • $395Fee
Series 7 content outline job functions and weightings

Table of Contents

The whole paper in one bar

The Series 7 content outline dated October 2025 is the exam guide FINRA publishes for General Securities Representative Qualification Examination (Series 7), restated so you can see the shape of the paper before you read a word of the detail. The bar below is the entire syllabus: 4 sections, in the order the certifying body lists them.

7%
9%
73%
11%
  • §1 Seeks Business for the Broker-Dealer from Customers and Potential Customers — 7%
  • §2 Opens Accounts After Obtaining and Evaluating Customers' Financial Profile and Investment Objectives — 9%
  • §3 Provides Customers with Information About Investments, Makes Recommendations, Transfers Assets and Maintains Appropriate Records — 73%
  • §4 Obtains and Verifies Customers' Purchase and Sales Instructions and Agreements; Processes, Completes and Confirms Transactions — 11%

Those percentages are FINRA’s own, not an estimate. That matters more than it sounds: most pages ranking for this query quote weightings the certifying body never published.

The syllabus, section by section

Each block below is one section of the official outline. The bullets are the sub-objectives FINRA publishes underneath it — the actual scope statement, not a summary of it.

Seeks Business for the Broker-Dealer from Customers and Potential Customers

7%~9 questions
  • Communications with the public: retail, institutional and correspondence; approval standards; seminars and other group forums
  • Product-specific advertising: fund and variable contract sales literature, options communications and the ODD, municipal advertising, CMOs, research reports and quiet periods
  • Bringing a new issue to market: due diligence, registration statement, cooling-off period, red herring, final prospectus, blue-sky
  • Underwriting: syndicate formation, selling groups, the underwriters' spread, concession and reallowance; IPO allocation and purchase restrictions
  • Municipal primary market: competitive vs negotiated sales, notice of sale, official statements, advance refunding
  • Exempt offerings and resales: Regulation A, Regulation D and accredited investors, Rule 147 intrastate, Rules 144 and 144A, QIBs, Regulation S

Opens Accounts After Obtaining and Evaluating Customers' Financial Profile and Investment Objectives

9%~11 questions
  • Account types: pattern day trading, prime brokerage, DVP/RVP, advisory and fee-based; required disclosures
  • Registrations: tenants in common, community property, sole proprietorship, partnership, unincorporated associations
  • Retirement and tax-advantaged accounts: transfers and rollovers, distributions and their taxation, ERISA plans, 457, defined benefit, profit-sharing, non-qualified deferred compensation
  • Customer screening: CIP, know-your-customer, residency and citizenship, corporate insiders, employees of broker-dealers and SROs
  • Privacy notices and opt-outs; powers of attorney, trust documents, corporate resolutions and discretionary authority
  • Investment profile: holdings, income, net worth, tax status, liquidity needs, objectives; reasonable-basis, customer-specific and quantitative care obligations
  • Supervisory approval to open accounts; when to restrict activity or close an account

Provides Customers with Information About Investments, Makes Recommendations, Transfers Assets and Maintains Appropriate Records

73%~91 questions
  • Portfolio analysis: risk tolerance, time horizon, diversification, asset allocation, alpha and beta, CAPM
  • Fundamental analysis: balance sheet and income statement, LIFO vs FIFO, liquidity and debt ratios, EPS, P/E, dividend payout
  • Equities: common and preferred stock, rights and warrants, ADRs, penny stocks; capital gains, wash sales and cost basis
  • Packaged products: mutual funds, ETFs, UITs, variable annuities, REITs, DPPs, hedge funds; sales charges, breakpoints, 12b-1 fees, tax treatment
  • Options: contract terms, the OCC, LEAPS; covered calls, protective puts, spreads, straddles, uncovered writing; break-even and profit/loss; tax treatment
  • Debt: corporate, Treasury (including STRIPS and TIPS), agency, CMOs and CDOs; yields, ratings, call features, OID and tax
  • Municipal securities: GO and revenue bond analysis, short-term notes, 529 and ABLE accounts, calls and refundings, accrued interest (30/360), taxable-equivalent yield
  • Disclosures, risk types and costs: markups, commissions, share classes, surrender charges; gift and estate tax; technical analysis and market sentiment
  • Account maintenance: confirmations and statements, ACATS transfers, records retention, account closure

Obtains and Verifies Customers' Purchase and Sales Instructions and Agreements; Processes, Completes and Confirms Transactions

11%~14 questions
  • Quotes and orders: firm vs subject quotes, all-or-none, fill-or-kill, immediate-or-cancel, not-held, market-on-close; best execution
  • Short sales: order marking, locate, borrow and delivery; securities lending
  • Market making and trade reporting: principal vs agency, order ticket content, TRACE, EMMA, the TRF, RTRS
  • Settlement and good delivery: when-issued, ex-dividend and ex-rights, due bills, DKs, book entry and DRS
  • Errors, complaints and disputes: cancels and rebills, written complaints, arbitration and mediation, Form U4 reporting
  • Margin: Regulation T, initial and maintenance requirements, long and short account calculations, SMA, buying power, portfolio and day-trading margin
Worth knowing

You cannot book the Series 7 on your own. FINRA requires you to be associated with and sponsored by a member firm, or another applicable SRO member firm, which enrols you. The paper is 125 scored items plus 5 unscored pretest items - 130 in 3 hours 45 minutes, about 1.7 minutes each - with four options per item, no penalty for guessing and no reference material. General Securities Representative registration also needs the SIE, as a co-requisite rather than a prerequisite. FINRA weights only the four functions. It publishes no split of Function 3's 91 items between options, municipal bonds, funds and the rest, so a per-product question count did not come from FINRA.

What the weightings really mean

A percentage in an exam guide is a promise about how many questions get drawn from a section, not about how hard those questions are. On a paper of roughly 125 items, Provides Customers with Information About Investments, Makes Recommendations, Transfers Assets and Maintains Appropriate Records at 73% is worth about 91 questions and Seeks Business for the Broker-Dealer from Customers and Potential Customers at 7% is worth about 9. Missing the whole of the smallest section still leaves you a pass on paper; missing the largest one does not.

The trap is treating that arithmetic as permission to skip. Weightings are the floor of what a section costs you, because the low-weight sections on almost every blueprint are the ones that supply context for questions filed under a different heading. You lose those marks in the heavy section and never find out why.

Reading the verbs in the objectives

The verb at the front of each sub-objective is the part candidates skim and examiners take literally. It sets the depth you are tested at, and it is the difference between recognising a term and being asked to choose between two answers that both look right.

VerbWhat a question at that depth looks like
Recommend / Determine suitabilityThe core of task 3.2: a customer with a stated age, income, tax position and objective, four products or strategies, and a question about which one meets the standard. Every option is a real product; three are wrong for this customer.
CalculateThe outline names the maths: options break-even and maximum gain or loss, taxable-equivalent yield, accrued interest on a 30/360 basis, cost basis after stock dividends, and margin equity, SMA and buying power. None of it is optional.
Disclose / DeliverWhich document goes to the customer, and when: the options disclosure document, the prospectus or official statement, confirmations and statements, privacy notices, the day-trading and margin disclosures. The distractor is usually the right document at the wrong moment.
Process / EscalateFunction 4 work: the right order type, the short-sale locate, settlement and good delivery, trade reporting, and what to do with an error or a written complaint. Task 4.3 is literally 'informs the appropriate supervisor', and that is often the answer.

Every task in the outline starts with something a representative does at a broker-dealer - contacts, describes, obtains, reviews and analyses, processes. That puts each question at the rep's desk with a named customer. The SIE checks that you know what a product is; the Series 7 checks whether you would put this customer in it.

Study it in this order, not the syllabus order

Exam guides are written to describe what a candidate must know, not to teach it. The published order is almost never the order that builds knowledge fastest. This is the sequence that front-loads the material everything else depends on.

OrderWhy here
1. Function 3: debt and municipal securitiesFunction 3 is 73% (91 items), and bonds are the longest product list inside it: yields, ratings, Treasuries, agencies, CMOs, GO and revenue analysis, accrued interest, taxable-equivalent yield. Bond maths returns in disclosures, margin and yield-based options.
2. Function 3: optionsStill inside the 91. Contract terms, covered calls, protective puts, spreads, straddles, uncovered writing and tax treatment. Strategy questions turn on break-even and profit/loss arithmetic, so study it in unbroken blocks.
3. Function 3: equities and packaged productsCommon and preferred stock, rights and warrants, cost basis and wash sales, then mutual funds, variable annuities, REITs, DPPs and hedge funds. Much of it extends SIE material you already hold.
4. Function 2: opening accounts9%, 11 items. Customer profile, care obligations, retirement accounts, account authorisations. Learn it here, because it turns product knowledge into the recommendation questions that dominate Function 3.
5. Function 3: analysis, disclosures and account maintenanceTasks 3.1, 3.3 and 3.4: fundamental and technical analysis, CAPM, risk types, costs and share classes, gift and estate tax, confirmations, ACATS transfers. Quick once the products are known.
6. Function 4: orders, settlement and margin11%, 14 items. Order types, short sales, settlement, complaints, then Regulation T margin and SMA - the one heavy calculation block outside Function 3.
7. Function 1: seeking business7%, 9 items, the smallest. Communications approval, the new-issue process, syndicates, Regulations A, D and S. Rule-heavy and short - leave it for the final week.
Sequencing note

Four of the seven steps sit inside Function 3 because that is where 91 of the 125 scored items are. FINRA does not say how those 91 split across products, so let the length of each product list in task 3.2 set your hours, not a percentage found online.

What changed, and how to spot the next change

The content matches the 2021 outline; the format, fee and retake rules have moved. FINRA's October 2025 outline keeps the four functions and their 9/11/91/14 item split but cuts the unscored pretest items from 10 to 5 (from 27 October 2025), so the paper is 130 items, not 135, in the same 3 hours 45 minutes. On 1 January 2026 the fee rose from $300 to $395, fixed through 2029 on FINRA's schedule. On 29 June 2026 FINRA filed to cut retake waits from 30/30/180 days to 15/15/60, starting on a date it will announce in a Regulatory Notice. A content change is in preparation: on 14 September 2026 FINRA launched a job analysis survey of General Securities Representatives to inform updates to the exam. No new outline date has been announced. A pass stays valid while you are registered and for two years after you leave.

Two habits keep you from studying a retired outline. First, open the official exam guide and look for its revision date before you buy anything — courses and question banks lag a syllabus change by months, and the cheapest ones never catch up. Second, re-check it the week you book. A revision announced after you started studying is still a revision you sit.

Turn the syllabus into questions

Reading an outline tells you the shape of the paper. Answering questions tells you which sections you would actually lose marks on. Start free, then $5.99 unlocks the full Series 7 bank.

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FAQ

What are the Series 7 job functions and their weightings?

Four, out of 125 scored items: Function 1, Seeks Business for the Broker-Dealer, 7% (9 items); Function 2, Opens Accounts after evaluating the customer's profile and objectives, 9% (11 items); Function 3, Provides Information, Makes Recommendations, Transfers Assets and Maintains Records, 73% (91 items); Function 4, Obtains and Verifies Instructions and Processes Transactions, 11% (14 items). FINRA publishes no weighting below function level.

What is the passing score for the Series 7?

72. FINRA places every score on a common scale through equating, which adjusts for small differences in difficulty between exam forms, so 72 is a scaled score rather than 72% of your answers correct. Only the 125 scored items count; the 5 pretest items are mixed in unmarked. There is no penalty for guessing, so make sure every item has an answer before the 3 hours 45 minutes run out.

Can I take the Series 7 without a sponsoring firm?

No. You must be associated with and sponsored by a FINRA member firm or another applicable SRO member firm; that is the main difference from the SIE, which anyone 18 or older can take. You also need the SIE to register as a General Securities Representative. A Series 7 pass qualifies you for two years; once registered, it stays valid while you hold the registration and for two years after you leave, or up to five through FINRA's Maintaining Qualifications Program.

How much does the Series 7 cost in total?

$395 per attempt since 1 January 2026, up from $300, and FINRA's fee schedule holds it there through 2029. Add $100 for the SIE if you have not passed it, so $495 for the pair at current fees. Each retake is charged again. The wait before a retake is 30 days after the first and second failures and 180 days after the third within two years, until FINRA implements the 15 and 60-day waits it filed in June 2026.

Sources

Every section title, sub-objective and number on this page comes from the certifying body:

Checked October 9, 2026. Exam guides are revised without notice — confirm against FINRA before you build a study plan around this page.