Certified Treasury Professional (CTP)

•     The global standard credential for treasury and corporate finance professionals — held by 30,000+ professionals worldwide.

•     Treasury is one of the most under-credentialled areas of finance — a CTP immediately differentiates you in a small talent pool with high demand.

•     Directly tied to business-critical functions: cash management, liquidity, FX risk, debt financing, and working capital — organisations depend on treasury professionals for survival.

•     One of the clearest pathways to CFO: understanding cash flows, capital markets, and risk at the operational level is precisely the experience CFO roles demand.

•     CTP holders report salary premiums of 15–25% over non-certified treasury peers (AFP Compensation Survey).

•     Global recognition in the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific for treasury management roles in MNCs.

Source: AFP CTP Certification Overview

What counts as qualifying experience? Any full-time corporate finance role: treasury, cash management, FP&A, accounts payable/receivable management, financial operations, bank relationship management. Internships and volunteer positions do NOT count.

Source: CTP Eligibility Requirements — Official AFP

The CTP is a single 170-question exam (approximately 150 scored questions + 20 unscored pilot questions). Duration: three and a half hours of testing time within a four-hour appointment. Computer-based at Pearson VUE test centres worldwide.

Exam is based on the AFP's Essentials of Treasury Management (8th Edition) — the definitive industry textbook.

Passing score: The exam is scored on a scaled score basis. AFP uses a scaled score of 200–500, with 300 required to pass (not a percentage), and the percentage correct required varies by exam form.

Exam update cycle: The CTP exam is updated every 3 years when a new edition of Essentials of Treasury Management is released.

Source: CTP Exam Specifications (Official)

2026–2028 CTP exam knowledge domains (approx. question counts out of 150 scored):

• Corporate liquidity management — 55–60
• Capital structure & long-term capital — 33–37
• Internal & external relationships — 12–17
• Financial, regulatory & operational risk — 23–27
• Technology’s impact on treasury — 23–27

Source: CTP Exam Fees — AFP Official

Key resource: The AFP CTP Exam Prep Platform includes 850+ practice questions, case studies, timed mock exams, and personalised study plans.

AFP does not publicly disclose the CTP pass rate. Based on candidate community reports and industry estimates:

AFP does not publish official pass rate statistics. The above are community estimates. For guidance from AFP, contact: ctpcert.financialprofessionals.org

•     Over 30,000 active CTP credential holders globally (2025).

•     Most concentrated in the USA, UK, Canada, and Germany; growing rapidly in UAE, Singapore, and India.

•     AFP has approximately 20,000+ members in the USA and 7,000+ internationally.

•     The CTP is recognised by US corporations, European MNCs, and increasingly by Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds and banks.

Source: AFP About CTP Credential

The CTP exam is offered in two testing windows each year. These are the windows and deadlines currently published by AFP, the body that owns the CTP:

You pick your exam appointment inside the window once your application is approved.

Application fees for new candidates:

The non-member fee includes one year of AFP membership.

Other dates for the 2026B window: cancellation and refund requests close 17 November 2026. Deferral requests close 31 January 2027. If you do not sit the exam within your window, you must re-register and pay the fee again.

Testing is at Pearson VUE centres worldwide. Always confirm against AFP before you pay, as dates and fees can change.

Source: AFP – CTP deadlines and fees, ctpcert.financialprofessionals.org. Verified 17 October 2026.

•     Pearson VUE appointment changes: You can reschedule your exam date at Pearson VUE at no charge more than 30 days before the exam. A fee applies within 30 days. Cancellation within 24 hours results in forfeiture of the exam fee.

•     Window transfers: If you need to move to the next testing window, you must contact AFP and submit a deferral request. This may involve a fee.

•     NTS validity: Your Authorization to Test (ATT) is valid for the duration of the specific testing window. If you do not test within that window, you must re-register and re-pay exam fees.

•     Retake policy: No limit on retakes, but you must re-register and re-pay the exam fee for each attempt. Application validity covers 6 consecutive windows.

Source: CTP FAQs — AFP Official

•     AFP Certification Scholarship: Available for early-career professionals (0–3 years experience) from underrepresented communities. Awards: waived application fee + 1-year Exam Prep Platform subscription + AFP membership. Application windows: May 1–June 30 annually. Source: AFP Scholarship Programme

•     Employer Sponsorship: Many large corporates (Fortune 500, major banks, MNCs) actively pay for CTP exam fees and study materials as part of professional development budgets. Ask your treasury/finance manager.

•     AFP Annual Conference Discounts: AFP members attending the annual conference often receive discounted exam registration bundles.

•     Essentials of Treasury Management — AFP (8th Edition): THE primary text. Required reading. If you only read one book, this is it.

•     Corporate Finance — Brealey, Myers, Allen: Strong conceptual foundation for capital markets and financing sections.

•     Financial Risk Management — Steve Allen: Deep dive into FX, interest rate, and commodity risk management.

•     Treasury Management: The Practitioner's Guide — Steven Bragg: Practical, applied treasury management reference covering day-to-day operations.

•     Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives — John C. Hull: Essential for the risk management and derivatives sections of the exam.

•     The Treasurer's Guide — Association of Corporate Treasurers (ACT): Free practitioner resource available at treasurers.org

Sources: AFP Compensation Survey | eFinancialCareers Treasury Salary Data | Glassdoor Treasury Analyst Salaries | LinkedIn Salary Insights

Salary premium for CTP holders (US data, AFP Compensation Survey): CTP holders report a median salary premium of 15–25% over non-certified peers in equivalent roles. The premium is highest at the Treasurer and VP-level roles where the credential validates expertise at a strategic level.

A CTP is a Certified Treasury Professional, certified by the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) as competent in corporate treasury — liquidity, capital structure, financial risk and the technology that supports the treasury function.

Unlike most finance certifications, the CTP is built around a working practitioner rather than a student. AFP requires a minimum of two years of full-time employment in a career-based corporate cash/treasury management or corporate finance role. Internships, vacation or holiday work and volunteer positions do not count, though an advanced business degree counts as the equivalent of one year.

Certification then takes two things:

• Pass the exam — 170 multiple-choice questions in a single sitting at a Pearson VUE test centre.
• Keep it current — holders must earn 36 continuing education credits every three years, where one credit equals 50 minutes of learning.

That recertification cycle is the part people underestimate. The CTP is a maintained credential, not a one-time pass: let the credits lapse and the certification lapses with it. Full rules are on the official CTP certification site.

Professional Career Club offers over 800 free CTP practice questions with step-by-step explanations. You can answer a question and read the full explanation before creating an account; a free account (email or Google sign-in) unlocks the rest of the question bank and the treasury community forum. No payment is required at any stage.

Start here: Free CTP practice questions.

Weight your practice the way AFP weights the exam. Of the 170 questions, 55–60 come from the liquidity domain alone — roughly a third of the paper — with 33–37 on capital structure, 23–27 each on risk and on treasury technology, and only 12–17 on internal and external relationships. AFP also specifies that just 10–15% of questions involve mathematical computation, so recall and applied judgement matter more here than calculation speed.