How to Pass GARP FRM Part II: 2026 Study Guide

FRM Part II is 80 multiple-choice questions in a single 4-hour session, and Market Risk, Credit Risk and Operational Risk each carry 20% of the exam. Most candidates budget about 200 to 240 hours over 3 to 4 months. Part I is largely a foundations exam: quantitative tools, financial markets and products, valuation and the theory of risk. Part II asks you to apply that to how risk is measured and managed inside real institutions. The questions lean less on plugging numbers into a formula and more on reasoning through a scenario, reading a short case and knowing which technique or regulatory requirement applies.

Each question has four choices, and every question is weighted the same. A hard credit question is worth exactly what an easy operational risk question is worth, so keep moving instead of getting stuck on one.

Topic weights and a 16-week plan

GARP publishes the Part II weights, and they're stable enough to plan around. For the 2026 cycle:

Three books (Market, Credit, and Operational Risk and Resilience) make up 60% of the exam, so if you're short on time, that's where an extra hour pays best. Current Issues is 10% and changes every year. It draws on a rotating set of readings GARP selects, often on topics like machine learning in risk, climate risk, cyber and operational resilience, the aftermath of the LIBOR transition and recent stress events. You can't study it from a two-year-old outline, so leave it for late in your prep when the current reading list is settled.

The figure I see most often for Part II is about 200 to 240 hours. If you work in market or credit risk every day, you may come in under that. If risk is new to you, plan for the top of the range and give yourself 3 to 4 months rather than cramming. Here's a 16-week plan:

• Weeks 1 to 4, Market Risk: VaR and expected shortfall, backtesting, volatility models, correlation and copulas, and parametric versus simulation approaches. This book sets the quantitative tone.
• Weeks 5 to 8, Credit Risk: default probability, credit VaR, structural and reduced-form models, counterparty risk, credit exposure, CVA and securitization. For most people it's the densest book.
• Weeks 9 to 11, Operational Risk and Resilience: loss distribution approaches, model risk, cyber and third-party risk, and the Basel operational risk framework. It's conceptual and reading-heavy, so don't underestimate the page count.
• Weeks 12 to 13, Liquidity and Treasury Risk: liquidity metrics, funds transfer pricing, stress testing and balance-sheet management. It's shorter, but it helps to have a clear picture of how a bank funds itself.
• Week 14, Risk Management and Investment Management: portfolio risk, factor models, hedge fund risk and performance measurement. Some of this overlaps with what CFA candidates already know.
• Week 15, Current Issues: read the current-cycle readings once carefully, then again for the main arguments. Focus on conclusions and definitions rather than fine detail.
• Week 16: full review and mocks, with timed practice, a pass through your error log and work on weak areas.

The plan front-loads the three 20% books on purpose. By the time you reach the smaller topics, you have momentum and the earlier quantitative tools are still fresh.

How to practice

Reading the curriculum once is necessary but it isn't enough. Part II rewards retrieval, meaning you have to pull concepts out of memory under time pressure rather than just recognize them on the page. Here's the routine I'd use:

1. Read a chapter, then do questions on it the same day. Most forgetting happens in the gap between reading and testing.
2. Keep an error log. For every question you miss, write one line on what it tested and why you got it wrong. Going through that log is the most useful hour of the week.
3. Do questions by topic first, then mixed. Early on, drill one book at a time to build depth. In the final month, switch to mixed sets that jump between market, credit and operational risk the way the real exam does, since switching context takes practice too.
4. Sit at least two full 80-question, 4-hour mocks. Four hours of dense case questions is tiring, and pacing (about 3 minutes per question) only becomes automatic with practice.

The FreeFellow FRM Part II question bank is built around this loop. The full bank and the explanations are free with an account, and Fellow adds analytics by topic and focus practice on your weak areas.

These are the mistakes I see most often:

• Treating Part II like Part I. Candidates who lean on formula memorization struggle, because Part II asks you to choose the right approach and interpret results more than to compute. Understand what a model assumes and when it breaks.
• Skipping Current Issues. It's only 10%, but the readings are short and the points are gettable, and skipping it entirely can decide a close result.
• Not practicing under time. Knowing the material and answering 80 questions in 240 minutes are different skills. If your first timed mock is in the last week, you haven't tested your pacing.
• Coasting on the qualitative operational and liquidity content because it's less mathematical. The wording of those questions can be subtle, and the definitions matter.
• Giving the three 20% books uneven time. Credit risk especially is dense, and people run out of time for it, so give the big books proportional time from the start.

How the exam is scored

GARP doesn't publish a numeric passing score or a percentage you have to hit. Results come back as pass or fail against a standard GARP sets, along with a quartile breakdown by topic so you can see where you stood relative to other candidates. Since there's no disclosed cutoff, aim to be comfortably strong across the three big books and at least competent everywhere else, rather than chasing a specific score.