ABA IRA Services Professional (CISP) Certification Sample Questions

01. A fee schedule permits an annual administration charge, but one branch waives it only for favored customers without documented criteria.
What is the main control issue?
a) Every IRA must pay identical investment expenses.
b) A branch may rewrite the custodial agreement orally, to preserve processing efficiency.
c) Inconsistent, unsupported fee treatment can conflict with disclosed terms and governance.
d) Fee waivers should be hidden from account records, and rely on a reporting adjustment to resolve the discrepancy.

02. An operations analyst proposes suppressing a reportable transaction because the owner says it will not be taxable.
Why is that proposal flawed?
a) Reportability and the owner's ultimate tax liability are separate determinations.
b) Only investment gains can ever be reported.
c) A beneficiary, rather than the custodian, decides what the institution reports, through the nearest involved party.
d) The owner must always pay tax on every IRA transaction.

03. A beneficiary asks the custodian to withhold an amount that will exactly equal the beneficiary's eventual tax.
What is the proper response?
a) Calculate the beneficiary's complete tax return, using the custodian's account data.
b) Guarantee that any elected amount is exact, using the desired tax result to select the transaction code.
c) Refuse every withholding election by a beneficiary.
d) Process a valid withholding election while avoiding a guarantee about final tax liability.

04. A partial conversion is posted as a full account closure, leaving residual cash unaccounted for.
What should correction address?
a) Treat the residual cash as an institution fee.
b) Restore the authorized partial scope and reconcile the residual assets and reporting.
c) Leave the account closed and wait for the owner to complain, pending a later complaint.
d) Move it to the Roth IRA without authorization, to preserve efficient processing while documenting the variance.

05. A year-end valuation arrives after information reporting was completed and materially changes the account value.
What should the institution determine?
a) Whether account, customer, and regulatory records require coordinated correction.
b) Change only the investment screen, while the remaining control is deferred to a separate reconciliation.
c) Discard the late value because reporting has closed, pending a later complaint.
d) Record the difference as a contribution.

06. A contribution was posted correctly, but the owner later learns the anticipated deduction is unavailable.
Does that fact alone make the contribution operationally erroneous?
a) Yes; every nondeductible contribution must be reversed immediately, using the customer's requested label as the controlling evidence.
b) No; the contribution may remain valid even though its deductibility differs from what the owner expected.
c) No; because deductibility can never depend on outside facts.
d) Yes; the institution should relabel it a rollover, through a reporting adjustment.

07. A SIMPLE IRA transfer request is reviewed as though the account were an ordinary Traditional IRA, with no participation-history check.
What is the core flaw?
a) The specialist failed to determine whether the receiving custodian can hold the selected investments.
b) The specialist relied on owner authorization without obtaining a separate employer approval.
c) The specialist treated the request as direct even though no receiving-account statement was attached.
d) The specialist ignored the SIMPLE plan context that may affect portability treatment.

08. An owner names 'my children' without identifying them, while the IRA agreement requires beneficiaries to be ascertainable from the institution's records.
Which action is most appropriate?
a) Seek a designation that satisfies the agreement's identification requirements.
b) Ask the owner's employer to choose the children, through the nearest involved party.
c) Enter the phrase unchanged because any family description is always sufficient.
d) List the owner's estate even though the owner did not select it, under the same workflow applied to the living account owner.

09. A customer asks the custodian to certify eligibility of an incoming plan payment without supplying the plan's distribution statement.
What is the best response?
a) Assume all plan payments are eligible rollovers, using the requested label.
b) Use the customer's intended investment as evidence.
c) Obtain reliable source-plan information before final rollover coding.
d) Code it as a regular contribution until an audit occurs, with the missing authority verified during routine post-processing.

10. A transfer request names a receiving account number that belongs to a different customer.
What should the releasing custodian do?
a) Divide the assets between both customer records, to preserve processing efficiency.
b) Send the assets and ask the receiving custodian to correct ownership later.
c) Pay the owner instead while retaining transfer coding, while preserving the intended label despite the owner's receipt.
d) Stop and resolve the ownership mismatch before releasing assets.