Exam at a glance
| Duration | 120 minutes |
|---|---|
| Maximum marks | 100 |
| Pass mark | 60% |
| Negative marking | 25% |
| Fee | ₹1,500 |
| Validity | 3 years |
Verified against the official NISM list; confirm before registering. All 34 certifications are on our exams table.
Who sits it
Staff of depository participants — the brokers and banks that open and service demat accounts — and others whose roles touch depository operations. The requirement is role-dependent and set by SEBI and the depositories, so confirm your obligation with your compliance team rather than inferring it from your job title.
What the paper covers
From the official workbook, free from nism.ac.in and the authoritative syllabus:
- The depository system — what a depository does, and the roles of depositories and participants
- Account opening — types of accounts, documentation, KYC
- Dematerialisation and rematerialisation — the process end to end
- Trading and settlement through the depository system
- Pledge, hypothecation and freezing of holdings
- Corporate actions and how they flow through demat holdings
- Transmission and nomination
- The regulatory framework, investor grievances and rights
Why this paper is different
Depository work is procedural, and so is the exam. It rewards knowing the steps, the documents and the sequence — not the ability to reason your way to an answer.
Most NISM papers reward conceptual understanding: get the principle and you can work out the specific. Series VI is the opposite. Questions turn on which form, whose signature, what timeline, which of these is permitted. You either know the procedure or you do not — reasoning will not rescue you.
That has two practical consequences:
Rote learning genuinely works here, more than on any other NISM paper. Documentation requirements, account types and process sequences are memorisable and directly examinable.
Practical experience helps but also misleads. If you already work at a DP, you know how your firm does it. The exam asks what the regulations require, and firm practice sometimes exceeds or abbreviates that. Where the two differ, the exam wants the regulation.
Where candidates lose marks
Pledge, freezing and transmission. The less common operations, less often encountered day to day, and disproportionately represented in questions because they are precisely defined.
Corporate actions in a demat context. Candidates know what a bonus issue is; the exam asks how it flows through the depository system.
Assuming experience is preparation. The most common failure among working DP staff is not reading the workbook because the subject feels familiar.
How to prepare
Three to four weeks alongside a job:
- Read the workbook once, marking every process that has a sequence or a document list.
- Make process cards — one per operation, listing the steps and documents. This is the paper where that pays.
- Study the less common operations properly: pledge, freeze, transmission, nomination.
- Practise timed, because 25% negative marking means guessing on a procedural question you half-remember is a losing trade. See passing marks and negative marking.
We do not currently offer a Series VI mock test
Plainly: we do not sell a mock test for Series VI. The papers we cover are listed on our mock tests page, and none is a substitute for Series VI practice — the material does not overlap meaningfully.
For this exam, work from the official workbook and any practice material whose questions you can confirm are mapped to the current edition. If we add Series VI later, this guide will be updated rather than replaced.
After you pass
Valid three years, then renewal through CPE or by passing the current version again — see validity and renewal. For DP staff, lapsing is a compliance issue for the employer as well as the individual, so diarise it.
Sitting a paper we do cover? Our mock tests use the real exam interface and timing, with explained answers and a score for every attempt. Free demo before you pay. See our mock tests.
