- How the ERIS Actually Works: Courses, Not One Exam
- Choosing Your Five of Six Courses
- What "Open Book, Unlimited Retakes" Really Means for Your Prep
- Course-by-Course Breakdown of What to Master
- Sequencing the Courses Within Your Five-Year Window
- Budgeting Money and Access Time
- Who Values the Designation
- After You Pass: Annual Renewal
- Frequently Asked Questions
- ERIS is earned by completing any five of six IRMI core courses, each with its own final assessment.
- Each certification-only final has 50 multiple-choice questions drawn from a bank; you need 70% correct.
- Default finals are open book, unproctored, and allow unlimited retakes, so preparation is about comprehension and speed of lookup.
- Current catalog pricing is USD 169 per course, or USD 845 for five selected courses.
How the ERIS Actually Works: Courses, Not One Exam
The most important thing to understand before you open any study material is that the Energy Risk and Insurance Specialist (ERIS) designation, issued by the International Risk Management Institute (IRMI), is not a single sitting exam. It is a course-based program delivered online through the IRMI + WebCE Learning Center. You complete five core courses, and each one ends with its own final assessment. There is no aggregate score that combines them.
That structure changes how you should study. Most candidates searching for a "study guide" expect a single body of knowledge to memorize and one high-stakes test date. With ERIS, you instead plan a sequence of five smaller, focused learning projects. If you want the background on the designation itself, see What Is ERIS Certification? and What Does ERIS Stand For?. For eligibility and program rules, the companion piece ERIS Requirements 2026: Eligibility, Prerequisites & How to Qualify covers the details.
Choosing Your Five of Six Courses
The IRMI curriculum currently lists six core course choices, and you must complete any five. The six headings are best read as preparation topics rather than six official domains of one exam, and the public information does not indicate any weighting among them. Here are the six, using their exact catalog titles:
- Commercial Liability Insurance for the Energy Industry
- Contractual Risk Transfer in Energy
- Control of Well/Operators Extra Expense Risks and Insurance
- Renewable Energy: Unlocking Opportunity
- Understanding the Oil and Gas Industry and Its Risks
- Workers Comp and Maritime Liability for the Energy Industry
For a deeper look at how each subject area fits together, read ERIS Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 6 Content Areas. Here, the practical question is which one to skip.
How to Decide Which Course to Leave Out
Because other degrees and designations do not waive any of the core courses, your choice should be driven by your own background and career direction rather than by shortcuts. A few honest ways to think about it:
- Skip the course furthest from your daily work. A claims professional who handles marine accounts may find Workers Comp and Maritime Liability the most familiar and could skip a course on a sector they never touch.
- Keep the foundational industry course if you are new to energy. Understanding the Oil and Gas Industry and Its Risks provides vocabulary that makes the other courses easier to follow.
- Consider the growth angle. The Renewable Energy: Unlocking Opportunity course was added to the core offering and reviewed in October 2025. If your employer is moving toward wind, solar, or storage, it may be worth keeping in your five.
- Weigh difficulty against interest. Control of Well/Operators Extra Expense is a specialized coverage topic; if you have no exposure to drilling programs, expect a steeper learning curve there.
- Build a course-specific lookup index. As you read each course, note where key concepts live so you can find them in seconds during the final.
- Read for scenarios, not definitions. Insurance questions tend to test how a coverage, exclusion, or contract clause applies to a situation, so practice applying concepts rather than reciting them.
- Do not rely on retakes as a plan. Unlimited retakes are a safety net, but passing on the first attempt saves time and keeps your momentum.
- Watch for question-bank variety. Because questions are selected from a bank, a retake may present different items, so shallow memorization of one attempt will not help.
- How standard commercial general liability concepts are adapted for energy operations
- Where energy-specific exposures strain or fall outside standard forms
- How umbrella and excess structures interact with primary energy liability programs
- Indemnity and hold-harmless concepts and how they allocate responsibility
- Additional insured status and how it supports a transfer program
- Why contract language and insurance wording must align for the transfer to work
- The purpose of operators extra expense coverage and what situations it addresses
- How well-control costs differ from ordinary property or liability losses
- Who typically purchases this coverage and why it appears in drilling programs
- How renewable projects create risk profiles different from hydrocarbon operations
- Insurance considerations across the project lifecycle
- Why the sector's rapid change makes this a useful differentiator for brokers and underwriters
- The stages of the industry and where exposures concentrate
- The vocabulary you will see again in every other course
- How operational hazards translate into insurable perils
- How workers compensation interacts with maritime and offshore employment
- Why liability regimes for seamen and offshore workers differ from land-based employees
- Coverage structures designed to fill gaps between statutory systems
- Start with Understanding the Oil and Gas Industry and Its Risks to build shared vocabulary
- Create your lookup index of key terms as you read
- Take the final once your index feels complete
- Complete Commercial Liability Insurance for the Energy Industry
- Follow immediately with Contractual Risk Transfer in Energy, since indemnity and additional insured concepts build on liability fundamentals
- Tackle Control of Well/Operators Extra Expense while the oil and gas vocabulary is fresh
- Add Workers Comp and Maritime Liability for the Energy Industry or the Renewable Energy course, depending on your fifth choice
- Do not buy a course until you can start it; the 12-month access clock begins at purchase.
- If you plan to study one course at a time, consider whether purchasing individually fits your pacing better than buying all five at once.
- Check whether your employer reimburses professional education before you pay out of pocket.
- Calendar your anniversary date as soon as you complete the program.
- Look at the renewal course catalog early rather than at the end of the 12 months.
- Treat the six hours as a recurring annual task, not a one-time requirement.
Key Takeaway
IRMI assumes you already know basic insurance terminology and fundamentals, and the liability and renewable courses explicitly expect basic P&C and commercial-liability knowledge. If your foundations are rusty, refresh them before purchasing a course, because your 12-month access window starts at purchase.
What "Open Book, Unlimited Retakes" Really Means for Your Prep
By default, certification-only course finals contain 50 multiple-choice questions selected from a question bank, require 70% correct to pass, are open book, need no proctor or monitor, and allow unlimited retakes. Those default conditions apply when you are taking the course for certification credit only. If you add optional insurance CE or CPA CPE credit, assessment requirements can change, so confirm the rules for your chosen credit type before you start.
It is tempting to read "open book with unlimited retakes" as "easy." That conclusion misses the real challenge, which is a time-and-comprehension challenge rather than a memorization one. For a candid take on difficulty, see How Hard Is the ERIS Exam? Complete Difficulty Guide 2026. For the specifics of the scoring threshold, ERIS Passing Score 2026: Exactly What You Need to Pass explains the 70% requirement in depth.
How to Prepare for an Open-Book Final
Course-by-Course Breakdown of What to Master
The paid course texts are not reproduced publicly, so the guidance below is built from the course titles and publicly described scope. Use it as a map of the terrain, then rely on the actual course materials for depth.
Commercial Liability Insurance for the Energy Industry
This course expects basic commercial-liability knowledge and, per its public description, was reviewed in September 2024. It corroborates the default 50-question, 70% assessment format.
Contractual Risk Transfer in Energy
Energy projects run on layered contracts among operators, contractors, and service companies. This course focuses on how risk is shifted by agreement.
Control of Well/Operators Extra Expense Risks and Insurance
One of the most distinctive subjects in the program, concerned with the costs that follow a well event.
Renewable Energy: Unlocking Opportunity
Explicitly approved for Core and reviewed in October 2025, this course assumes basic P&C insurance and energy-industry terminology.
Understanding the Oil and Gas Industry and Its Risks
The orientation course. It frames the value chain and the hazards that drive insurance demand.
Workers Comp and Maritime Liability for the Energy Industry
Covers the human-injury side of energy work, including offshore and marine settings where ordinary rules do not neatly apply.
Sequencing the Courses Within Your Five-Year Window
You must complete all five courses and their final assessments within five years of purchasing the first core course. Separately, individual online courses generally provide 12 months of access from purchase. These are two different clocks, and confusing them is the most common planning mistake. The longer five-year window governs the whole designation; the 12-month window governs each individual course.
Since study technique should serve the specifics of this program, here is one sample ordering that follows the logic of the content itself. Adjust it to your chosen five.
Industry Foundations
Liability and Contracts
Specialty Coverages
This is only a template. Because you control the pace and the five-year window is generous, you could just as reasonably take one course per quarter while working full time. If you want a compact reference for last-minute review, ERIS Cheat Sheet 2026: One-Page Review of Must-Know Facts pairs well with your own notes.
Key Takeaway
Order matters more than speed. Taking the industry-overview course first and pairing liability with contractual risk transfer lets each course reinforce the next, which is where a course-based program rewards planning.
Budgeting Money and Access Time
Current catalog pricing is USD 169 per course, or USD 845 for five selected courses. IRMI also advertises optional insurance CE credit for an additional USD 19 per course. Older descriptions and cached pages may show a USD 149 course price and a five-course-only structure; read those against the current six-choice catalog and USD 169 pricing. A full breakdown lives in ERIS Certification Cost 2026: Complete Pricing Breakdown.
| Item | Current Detail |
|---|---|
| Single core course | USD 169 |
| Five selected courses (bundle) | USD 845 |
| Optional insurance CE credit | USD 19 extra per course |
| Final assessment format | 50 multiple-choice questions, 70% to pass |
| Proctoring and retakes (default) | Open book, no proctor, unlimited retakes |
| Course access period | Generally 12 months from purchase |
| Program completion window | Five years from first core course purchase |
Ways to Avoid Wasting Access Time
Who Values the Designation
ERIS is aimed at professionals who deal with the risk and insurance of energy operations. In practice, that points to a few groups: brokers and account executives placing energy programs, underwriters and claims professionals at carriers writing energy business, risk managers inside producers, service companies, and renewable developers, and consultants who advise on project risk. The designation signals that you can speak the language of both the industry and the insurance contract, which is useful when those two worlds meet in a coverage discussion.
For a realistic view of the opportunities, read ERIS Jobs. Compensation is a separate question; our analysis in ERIS Salary Guide 2026: Complete Earnings Analysis and the broader Is the ERIS Certification Worth It? Complete ROI Analysis 2026 discuss it without inventing figures the public sources do not support.
After You Pass: Annual Renewal
Earning the designation is not the end of the obligation. Validity is renewed annually on your certification anniversary by earning six approved continuing-education hours in each 12-month period. Those hours can come from an online renewal course, eligible IRMI conference sessions, or an approved educational event. Renewal credit cannot be carried forward into a future year, so a surplus in one year does not cover the next.
For a broader introduction to the designation and its upkeep, see ERIS Certification, and for timing details on the program, ERIS Exam Dates 2026: Testing Windows, Deadlines & Scheduling explains why there are no fixed test dates in the traditional sense.
If you want to sharpen your recall of insurance and energy-risk concepts before you attempt a course final, you can try our ERIS practice questions, and the main practice test site offers additional scenario-style questions to test how well you can apply what you read.
Frequently Asked Questions
Several. ERIS is earned by completing any five of six core courses, and each course has its own final assessment. The finals are separate and are not combined into an aggregate score.
For certification-only credit, each final has 50 multiple-choice questions selected from a question bank, and you need 70% correct to pass. Adding insurance CE or CPA CPE credit can change the assessment requirements.
Under the default certification-only conditions, finals are open book, require no proctor, and allow unlimited retakes. Confirm the rules for your specific credit type before you begin.
You must complete five courses and their finals within five years of purchasing the first core course. Individual online courses generally give 12 months of access from purchase, which is a separate clock.
Current catalog pricing is USD 169 per course or USD 845 for five selected courses, with optional insurance CE credit for USD 19 extra per course. The designation is renewed annually by earning six approved continuing-education hours in each 12-month period.