OPRA Exam case studies
OPRA Exam · Put your knowledge to work in context.
OPRA - the Operations Professional Examination - is a multiple-choice credential aimed at the people who run the middle- and back-office machinery behind client accounts: the documentation, controls and settlement work that keeps a firm accurate and defensible. It suits operations analysts, trade support and settlement staff, onboarding and KYC teams, reconciliation and regulatory-reporting specialists, and compliance-adjacent colleagues who need working command of the rulebook rather than a sales or advisory licence. The OPRA Exam case studies are 5 cases and about 4,246 words.
1The Impossible Fill Price
At 09:14 a portfolio manager at a mid-sized wealth manager places one aggregated buy order for 120,000 shares in a FTSE 250 industrial for four discretionary clients, all run on the same model. The order fills at a single average price of 412.6p.
812 words, about 4 min2The Thursday Redemption
On Thursday afternoon a relationship manager receives an email from a long-standing client, a UK-resident sole trader in construction, asking to redeem £380,000 and pay it to a new account at a different bank. The email comes from the address on file, uses the client's usual sign-off, and says he is 'moving banks, please action today - completion is tomorrow'.
877 words, about 4 min3The Oversubscribed Allocation
You are head of investment at a small discretionary manager. A corporate broker allocates your firm 50,000 shares in an oversubscribed IPO, well above the 8,000 you indicated, evidently as a reward for the flow you have given them this year.
794 words, about 4 min4The Break That Grew
On the last business day of the quarter, the operations analyst reconciling the firm's pooled client money bank account finds the cleared balance is £1,186,000 lower than the sum of the individual client ledger balances. The break first appears three weeks ago and has grown steadily since; there is no single day on which it started.
826 words, about 4 min5It's My Money
An 82-year-old widow, Mrs A, has a £600,000 portfolio, mostly cash and short-dated gilts, following her husband's death eight months ago. Her adviser proposes moving £400,000 into a five-year structured product, 100% capital-at-risk, paying 7% a year conditional on an index not falling more than 30%.
937 words, about 5 min