CMA Part 2 covers six content domains, and Business Decision Analysis is the heaviest at 25%. Global pass rates for CMA parts typically land in the 45% to 50% range, and most candidates need about 150 to 170 hours for one part. Part 1 leans into planning, budgeting and internal controls, while Part 2 is about how a business is financed, valued and decided upon. It's the more analytical of the two parts, with more calculation-heavy questions and less pure memorization.
The IMA runs the exam, and FreeFellow isn't connected to the IMA. This guide is my read on how to prepare efficiently.
Part 2 rewards fluency with a set of financial tools: ratio analysis, cost of capital, capital budgeting and valuation. If you can look at a scenario and know within a few seconds which formula or framework applies, you're most of the way there.
What's on the exam
The six domains and their weights:
| Domain | Weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Financial Statement Analysis | 20% | Ratio analysis, common-size statements, profitability, liquidity, leverage, and the effects of different accounting choices |
| Corporate Finance | 20% | Cost of capital, capital structure, dividend policy, working capital management and financial markets |
| Business Decision Analysis | 25% | Cost-volume-profit analysis, marginal analysis, pricing and short-term decision making |
| Enterprise Risk Management | 10% | Types of risk, enterprise risk management, and hedging with derivatives at a conceptual level |
| Capital Investment Decisions | 10% | Capital budgeting, net present value, internal rate of return and payback |
| Professional Ethics | 15% | Ethical considerations for the organization, applied through the IMA statement of ethical conduct |
Business Decision Analysis plus the two 20% domains make up 65% of your score. If you master Financial Statement Analysis, Corporate Finance and Business Decision Analysis, you've built the core of a passing performance before you touch the smaller domains. Don't skip Ethics, though. At 15% it's worth more than Enterprise Risk Management or Capital Investment Decisions, and it's one of the more predictable domains to score well on because the reasoning is consistent.
Since the September/October 2026 window, the exam is 100 multiple-choice questions plus two case-based question sets over 4 hours, about 3 hours for the multiple-choice section and 1 hour for both case sets. Essays ran through the May/June 2026 window and remain the format in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. You need at least 50% of the multiple-choice points to unlock the second section. A passing scaled score is 360 out of 500, and because scores are scaled, you can't map a pass to an exact number of correct answers.
Study hours and a 14-week plan
Most candidates need roughly 150 to 170 hours for one part. If corporate finance and valuation are new to you, plan for the higher end. If you already work in FP&A or finance, you may come in under it. I'd split 14 weeks like this:
- Weeks 1 to 3: Financial Statement Analysis. Get comfortable computing and interpreting ratios without a reference sheet.
- Weeks 4 to 6: Corporate Finance. Cost of capital and capital structure are the anchor concepts.
- Weeks 7 to 9: Business Decision Analysis. Give it the most time, since it's the largest domain and the questions can be layered.
- Weeks 10 to 11: Capital Investment Decisions and Enterprise Risk Management. These are smaller, and capital investment overlaps with the finance work you've already done.
- Week 12: Professional Ethics plus case-based practice.
- Weeks 13 to 14: full-length mixed review, timed practice and case-based sets.
At about 10 to 14 hours a week, that puts you inside the target range with a real review buffer at the end. The buffer matters more than most candidates expect, because cramming new material in the final week tends to backfire.
How to practice
The 50% gate shapes how you should practice. Treat multiple choice as the foundation: do questions in volume and review every miss until you understand the concept, not just the right letter. I'd work through a large question bank domain by domain, then switch to mixed sets once you can pass individual domains reliably. You can practice free CMA Part 2 questions to build that volume without paying for a bank.
Budget your time, too. At 100 questions in about 180 minutes, you have a bit under two minutes per question. Practice with a clock so the pace becomes automatic, and on exam day, flag and move past anything that stalls you rather than burning four minutes on one calculation.
Practice the case-based sets along the way, not just at the end. Each set gives you a case and asks you to apply concepts across several item formats, and IMA allows about 30 minutes per set, so work full practice sets under that clock.
The most common mistake is underweighting Business Decision Analysis. It's 25% of the exam and calculation-dense, and candidates who treat it as one topic among many leave easy points behind. Another is ignoring the case-based sets until the final week. The gate makes the multiple-choice section feel like the whole exam, but your case-based score is added to your multiple-choice score in one total scaled score, so start practicing case sets by the halfway point of your plan.
Some candidates also memorize formulas without understanding what drives them. Part 2 questions often change one variable in a scenario to see whether you understand the relationship, and rote recall doesn't hold up to that. People neglect Ethics because it feels soft, when at 15% it's worth studying properly and the questions are consistent enough that a few focused hours pay off. And if you haven't practiced at exam pace on the calculation-heavy sets, you can run out of time even when you know the content.