Section 4: Overview of the Regulatory Framework, Practice Questions
Section 4, Overview of the Regulatory Framework, is the smallest section of the SIE® exam: 9% of your score, about 7 of the 75 scored questions. Small, but dense with citable facts about becoming and staying registered, and it contains one of the exam’s freshest traps: FINRA Rule 3220’s gift limit rose from $100 to $300 effective March 30, 2026, and prep materials still drilling $100 are behind the rule. Our four sets here, 115 questions, carry the current numbers, cited. Start with a mixed set:
Question 1 of 10
Under FINRA's continuing education requirements, a registered representative must complete the Regulatory Element:
The four Section 4 topics
Registration and CE: 62 questions. The section’s core: who must register, the permissive-registration rules, statutory disqualification, and the Regulatory Element/Firm Element continuing-education pair.
U4, U5, and Reporting: 16 questions. The two forms, the 30-day clocks, what’s disclosable, and who files what when a rep leaves.
Gifts and Gratuities: 24 questions. The $300 limit (current as of March 2026), what counts against it, and the business-entertainment carve-out.
OBA and PST: 13 questions. Outside business activities vs. private securities transactions: notice vs. permission, and why “selling away” ends careers.
How to attack this section
Do it in one sitting. Seven scored questions don’t justify a week, and the facts here are the flash-card kind: limits, deadlines, form names. A sensible pass is Registration and CE first (it’s nearly half the section’s bank), then the U4/U5 clocks, then gifts and OBA/PST together; the two conduct sets share the same instinct: when in doubt, the rep owed the firm notice. If a fact refuses to stick, the SIE cheat sheet keeps the Section 4 numbers on one page.
The conduct thread starts back in Section 3: Trading, Customer Accounts, and Prohibited Activities, and the who-regulates-whom map lives in Section 1: Knowledge of Capital Markets: the exam treats all three as one regulatory story. Browse all SIE practice questions by topic, or take the free practice exam to see Section 4 at its true, modest weight.
