How many questions are in HKSI Paper 1?

Sixty. That is the whole answer, and the interesting part is what sits behind it.

How are the 60 questions split across topics?

HKSI does not say. There is no published blueprint, so anyone who gives you a confident per-topic count is estimating, including us.

Our own estimate is a judgement about where the emphasis falls, and it is the split our question bank is built to. Topic 3, the Securities and Futures Ordinance, has eleven of the 66 headings and comes out heaviest at around 16 questions. Topic 4, licensing and subsidiary legislation, is next at roughly 10. Topic 2 is the smallest. Treat those as a study-time guide, not as a fact about the paper.

Does 60 questions make it a short exam?

It is short in wall-clock terms and it does not feel short. Ninety minutes for 60 items leaves no room to sit and think, which is the part candidates underestimate.

The questions themselves are not long. Most are a scenario of a few lines with four options, and the work is classification rather than calculation. If you know the rule you answer in under a minute. If you do not, no amount of staring will produce it, which is why the pacing problem is really a preparation problem wearing a stopwatch.

How many can you get wrong?

You need 42 right, so the margin is thin. That is the single number that makes this exam harder than its reputation, because a 70% threshold on broad low-difficulty material punishes partial knowledge across every topic at once.

The published mean pass rate over the twelve months to June 2026 was 51.9%. About half of candidates do not clear the line. Very few of them fail because a question was too hard; they fail because they were unsure on a dozen items scattered across topics they skimmed.

Is the question count the same in the Chinese version?

Yes. The paper is offered in English and Traditional Chinese, and both are 60 questions in 90 minutes at the same 70% pass mark and the same HKD 1,800 fee. HKSI publishes one pass rate per sitting, not a split by language, so nobody can honestly claim either version is easier.

What we would actually do with this number

Use it to design your practice rather than to reassure yourself. Sixty questions in ninety minutes is a specific physical experience, and doing it cold on exam day is a self-inflicted disadvantage. Sit at least a few full-length timed runs before the real thing.

One concession on our estimate: the heading-count method assumes HKSI weights topics in proportion to syllabus structure, and we have no way to verify that. It might over-weight Topic 3. We publish it because a rough weighting beats no weighting when you are deciding where the hours go, not because we think it is precise. The full breakdown sits on the Paper 1 exam format page, and the hardest topics covers where the marks actually go missing.