The shortest chapter in the syllabus, and the one that sets the vocabulary for everything after it. Four questions out of a hundred, but the distinctions it draws reappear in chapters you cannot afford to lose marks on.
The syllabus frames the sector by function rather than by institution: moving money between individuals, businesses and government, and managing risk. Almost every later chapter is a variation on one of those two jobs.
The dividing line is who is transacting and at what size, not what is being bought. A corporate treasurer placing forty million overnight with another bank is wholesale. A household opening a savings account is retail. The same instrument can appear in both.
Retail banks, investment banks, pension funds and fund managers, each with a distinct job. Investment banks advise on takeovers and raise capital. Retail banks take deposits and lend. Pension funds are asset owners with very long liabilities. Fund managers run money on behalf of others.
Called out separately in the syllabus because the role is easy to confuse with management. A custodian holds and safekeeps assets and handles settlement and corporate actions. It does not decide what the portfolio owns.
Investment managers, financial planners, private banks and platforms. The distinction is between deciding how money is invested, planning around a life, providing an integrated relationship, and providing the infrastructure.
A short revision checklist built from the official syllabus and from the explanations in our own question bank. Use it to check yourself after studying the chapter. It does not replace the official workbook, and it is not a prediction of what any exam will contain. Unfamiliar term? See the glossary.
The published examination specification allocates 4 of the 100 questions to this element. CISI notes the count may vary slightly between papers, so treat 4 as the weighting rather than a guarantee. Our bank holds 48 questions across the 5 learning objectives in this chapter, weighted to that same specification.
These are not predictions about any exam. They are places where the syllabus itself draws a line between two things that sound similar, which is where precise reading pays.
Size and counterparty type drive the classification. Do not read the presence of an ultimate retail investor as making a transaction retail.
If a question describes an organisation that holds assets and settles trades but makes no allocation decisions, it is describing a custodian, whatever else it does.
A private bank is usually a deposit taking institution offering an integrated relationship. A family office coordinates advisers and is not itself a bank. A platform provides infrastructure rather than advice.
Chapter 1 contains no calculation objectives. The syllabus phrases its objectives as know and understand, so the marks come from precision about definitions rather than arithmetic. The calculating lives mainly in Chapter 5.
Chapter 1 is small enough that you can cover it properly in one sitting. Filter practice to this chapter and work through it until the institution and role distinctions are automatic, because they reappear in Chapters 2 and 7 where the marks are much heavier. Four questions is not many, but they are four of the most gettable in the paper.
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