Sustainable Investing Exam Results: How to Read Your Score Report
- Kateryna Myrko
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
If you’ve just sat the Sustainable Investing exam (often delivered as the CFA Institute Sustainable Investing Certificate, previously branded as the Certificate in ESG Investing), the “results” experience is intentionally straightforward: you receive an immediate pass/fail decision at the test center, followed by an emailed confirmation and—if applicable—a detailed topic-level score report. The key is knowing when each component becomes available and what the score report is (and is not) telling you.
Sustainable Investing Exam Results: Typical release timeline: what you’ll see and when
1) On-screen result at the end of your exam (immediate)
At the conclusion of the exam, your result is displayed on-screen as either “Pass” or “Did Not Pass.” This immediate outcome is the first and fastest signal—there’s no waiting period for an initial decision.
2) Email confirmation and access via the score portal (within 24 hours)
After you finish, you should also receive an email confirmation. In addition, your results (and where applicable, your score report) can be accessed through the Prometric score report portal within 24 hours of exam completion. Sustainable Investing Exam Results
A useful operational note: the official guidance indicates that score reports remain available for five years from your exam completion date—important if you plan to reference your report later for development planning or a retake strategy.
3) Availability in your CFA Institute account (up to 14 days)
Even though you can typically access the result quickly via email and the score portal, the same result may take longer to appear in your CFA Institute account—up to 14 days. This is normal and reflects administrative synchronization rather than re-scoring.
4) What you receive depends on pass vs. did not pass
If you pass: you see the pass notification immediately on-screen and receive an email within 24 hours. You may also receive separate instructions for claiming a digital badge, depending on the program’s current credentialing process.
If you do not pass: you see “Did Not Pass” on-screen and receive (or can retrieve) a score report that includes topic-level performance feedback designed to guide your remediation.
How to read your score report (and avoid the most common misreads)
1) Start with the headline result: pass/fail is based on an overall minimum standard
The exam uses a minimum passing score (MPS)—the performance standard required to pass. Importantly, CFA Institute states that it does not release the MPS itself.
From a psychometrics standpoint, the MPS is set through a standard-setting process (CFA Institute references the modified Angoff method) and is governed/approved through its governance process; the program also describes the use of equating to maintain fairness across exam versions of slightly different difficulty.
What this means for candidates: you should not try to reverse-engineer a “required percent correct.” The pass decision is anchored to a defensible standard, not a publicly disclosed cutoff.
2) Understand what the topic chart shows: quartiles + a position marker
For candidates who did not pass, the report typically shows each topic area with four performance bands (quartiles):
0%–25%
26%–50%
51%–75%
76%–100%
Your performance in each topic is indicated by a black dot positioned within one quartile band, which helps you distinguish “barely in the band” from “strongly in the band.”
3) Don’t assume “all green” means pass—and don’t average topic bars
Two official cautions matter here:
No topic-by-topic passing score exists. Topic results are provided as diagnostic feedback; the exam is passed or failed based on the total exam score.
You cannot average topic performance to infer your overall score. Topics contain different numbers of questions and contribute differently, so there is no one-to-one relationship between topic bars and your overall outcome.
This is why a candidate can show apparently “decent” topic shading and still not pass: the overall score may still fall below the MPS, and topic weights/question counts matter.
4) Use the 70% guideline properly: as a mastery heuristic, not a rule
CFA Institute describes a practical rule of thumb: consistent performance above ~70% of available points is a reasonable signal of topic mastery—while also noting that this level is “somewhat arbitrary.”
Interpretation: use 70% as a study target (especially in practice questions and mocks), not as a guaranteed pass indicator.
5) Turn the report into a retake plan
The Sustainable Investing Certificate FAQ guidance translates quartiles into action:
In or below the 50% quartile: “substantial remediation” is needed.
Lower end of the 51%–75% band: continue studying these areas diligently.
A high-quality plan usually looks like:
remediate the lowest band topics first (concept rebuild + targeted practice),
stabilize mid-band areas with mixed sets,
push most topics toward “mastery-level” practice performance (often 70%+ in timed conditions), then
use full mock exams to test endurance and time management.
Done right, your score report becomes a diagnostic map—not a post-mortem.
Unlock your potential with our comprehensive Sustainable Investing Certificate practice exams and study packages!
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