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Hong KongWhat is the HKSI Paper 1 pass mark?
The HKSI Paper 1 pass mark is 70%, which is 42 correct answers out of 60 questions. It is a fixed threshold rather than a curve, so your result does not depend on how anyone else in the room performed. Over the twelve months to June 2026 the mean pass rate was 51.9%.
Seventy per cent. Forty-two of sixty. That threshold is the most important single fact about this exam, and it is more responsible for the failure rate than the syllabus is.
- Pass mark
- 70%
- In questions
- 42 of 60
- Fixed or curved?
- Fixed threshold
- Twelve-month mean pass rate
- 51.9%, to June 2026
- Implied fail rate
- About 48.1%
- Grades above a pass
- None published. It is a pass or a fail
- Fee per attempt
- HKD 1,800
Is the pass mark curved or scaled?
It is a fixed 70%. Nothing about your result depends on the rest of the cohort, so there is no benefit to sitting a quiet month and no penalty for sitting alongside a strong intake.
That also means the published monthly pass rates tell you about candidates rather than about the paper. When the rate moved from 47.4% in March 2026 to 61.84% in November 2025, the line stayed exactly where it was.
Why 70% is harder than it sounds
Because the material is broad and shallow rather than narrow and deep. Nine topics, 66 second-level syllabus headings, and the paper samples across all of them, so there is no topic you can safely leave alone in the hope it will not come up.
Compare that with a professional exam set at 50% or 60%, where a candidate can be strong on two thirds of the syllabus and pass anyway. Here you cannot. Being reliably good everywhere beats being excellent in three topics and vague in the rest, and most candidates prepare in exactly the opposite shape.
Do you get a mark, or just a result?
HKSI's own examination handbook is the place to check what your result notification actually shows, and we have not verified the current format, so we are not going to describe it for you. What we can say is that we have seen no published grading tiers above a pass. It is a licensing gate, and a gate is binary.
That has one practical consequence worth internalising: there is no prize for 90%. Aim to clear the line with margin, then stop optimising and go and sit the paper.
What margin should you actually target?
| Mock score | Read | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Below 50% | Not close | Go back to the syllabus. More questions will not fix a content gap this size |
| 50% to 65% | Realistic but not safe | Drill your two weakest topics, then re-mock |
| Around 70% | Borderline | You are one bad form away from a resit. Keep going |
| 45 of 60 or better | Ready | Book the sitting. Extra weeks now have low returns |
Our opinion: treat 45 of 60 in timed mock conditions as your real target, not 42. The gap between mock performance and exam performance is almost always negative, because at the real sitting you are nervous, the wording is unfamiliar and nobody is letting you check a rule.
The concession: that margin is a working rule of thumb from how candidates describe their results, not something derived from published data. HKSI releases pass rates and not score distributions, so nobody can tell you precisely how mock scores map onto exam scores. Treat it as a safety margin rather than a calculation.
If you want the fuller picture of what the pass rate implies, the pass rate page has every published monthly figure, and why people fail Paper 1 covers the patterns behind that 48.1%.
Common questions
How many questions do I need right to pass HKSI Paper 1?
42 out of 60. The pass mark is a fixed 70%, applied the same way at every sitting, so there is no curve and no adjustment based on how difficult a particular form turned out to be.
Is the HKSI Paper 1 pass mark ever adjusted?
We have seen nothing published to suggest it is. The 70% threshold is stated as a fixed standard, and the monthly variation in published pass rates reflects the candidates rather than a moving line. Check the HKSI examination handbook for the current statement.
Does a higher score help my SFC application?
No. There is no published grading above a pass, and the licensing process is concerned with whether you met the competence requirement rather than by how much. Clear the line with a sensible margin and move on to the next paper.