What exactly is the IECEE CB Scheme?

The CB Scheme is an international system, run by the IECEE (the IEC System of Conformity Assessment Schemes for Electrotechnical Equipment and Components), for the mutual acceptance of product safety test results. A product is tested once against the relevant IEC standard by a recognised National Certification Body and its associated CB Testing Laboratory. The resulting CB Test Certificate and CB Test Report are then accepted by other member bodies as the basis for their own national certification, removing most duplicate testing.

Does a CB Test Certificate let me sell my product anywhere?

No. The CB Test Certificate is not a market authorisation and it is not a mark you can put on the product. It is an input document. To place a product on a given national market you still convert the CB package into that country's certification (KC in Korea, CCC in China, BIS in India, and so on). The CB Scheme shortcuts the testing step, not the legal market-access step.

What product categories does the CB Scheme cover?

The IECEE organises its work into product categories tied to families of IEC standards. They include safety of information technology and audio/video equipment (IEC 62368-1), household and similar appliances (IEC 60335 series), luminaires and lighting (IEC 60598 series), measuring and laboratory equipment (IEC 61010), medical electrical equipment (IEC 60601 series), batteries (IEC 62133), cabling, capacitors, and more. Each category has a fixed product-category code used on the CB Test Certificate.

Does the CB Scheme cover EMC and radio as well as safety?

Primarily it covers safety. The core CB Scheme addresses electrical safety and, through dedicated programmes, energy efficiency and photovoltaics. EMC results can be exchanged under the separate IECEE EMC programme where the destination body participates, but radio (RF) type approval is outside the CB Scheme entirely. A CB package never replaces FCC, RED radio or a national radio licence.

How much time and money does the CB Scheme actually save?

The saving comes from testing once instead of once per country. Instead of paying for a full safety test campaign in each target market, you pay for one CB test campaign, then per-country fees that mostly cover document review, national-deviation checks and any delta testing. For a product going to several markets this typically removes weeks to months from the schedule and a large share of repeat lab cost, though exact figures depend on the product and the countries.

What are national differences and why do they matter?

A CB Test Report is issued against the international IEC standard, but each member country may apply national differences (also called national deviations): extra or modified requirements reflecting local mains voltage, plug systems, climate or regulation. These are declared to the IECEE and appended to the report. When you convert a CB package into a national certification, the receiving body checks your product against its national differences, which may trigger limited additional testing.

Is a CB Test Certificate accepted in the United States and the EU?

Both participate, but with caveats. In the US a CB report is widely used as the starting dossier for an NRTL listing (UL/ETL), yet the NRTL still issues its own listing against the US-adopted standard. In the EU there is no national certification to obtain for CE, so a CB report serves as supporting safety evidence inside the technical file rather than as a certificate you exchange.

Who can issue a CB Test Certificate?

Only a National Certification Body recognised by the IECEE, working with an accepted CB Testing Laboratory. NCBs are designated per member country and per product category. A test from an ordinary commercial lab that is not an NCB or accepted CBTL cannot become a CB Test Certificate, even if the lab is competent and accredited.

CB Scheme (IECEE): global safety via one report

Author Hugues Orgitello Last updated 28 May 2026 ~11 min read

Guide · Going global with one safety report

When a product has to be sold in many countries, the slow and expensive part is rarely the engineering, it is repeating the same safety tests for every market. The IECEE CB Scheme exists precisely to break that loop. It is an international agreement under which a product is tested once against an IEC safety standard, by a recognised body, and the resulting CB Test Certificate plus CB Test Report are then accepted by member countries as the basis for their own national approvals, with minimal re-testing. This page explains what the CB Scheme is, how the documents flow, what it covers, where its limits lie, and how it accelerates national marks like KC, CCC, BIS and SASO.

What the CB Scheme is

The CB Scheme is operated by the IECEE, the IEC System of Conformity Assessment Schemes for Electrotechnical Equipment and Components. The IECEE is one of the conformity assessment systems run under the umbrella of the IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission, see the glossary entry on the IEC). Its single most important deliverable is the multilateral acceptance of test results for product safety.

The principle is deliberately simple. A manufacturer has its product tested once against the applicable IEC standard, by a recognised National Certification Body (NCB) working with an accepted CB Testing Laboratory (CBTL). That body issues two documents:

a CB Test Certificate, a short formal attestation that the sample meets the cited IEC standard, identifying the product, the standard, the testing NCB and the product category;
a CB Test Report, the full record of every test clause, the measured results, the photographs and the construction details.

These two documents form the CB package. Other IECEE member bodies, in other countries, accept that package as evidence and use it to grant their own national certification, instead of re-running the whole test campaign. The CB Scheme is therefore best understood as a mutual recognition mechanism for safety test data, not as a certificate of its own legal standing in any single market.

This distinction matters and is examined further in the dedicated guide on conformity assessment bodies and accreditation, which explains how NCBs, CBTLs and accreditation interlock.

How the mechanism works, step by step

The lifecycle of a CB package follows a predictable path. Understanding it helps you plan a multi-market launch realistically.

Step	What happens	Who acts
1. Select standard	Identify the applicable IEC safety standard and product category	Manufacturer, with the NCB
2. Test once	The product is tested against the IEC standard, plus the national differences you ask for	CBTL / NCB
3. Issue CB package	The NCB issues the CB Test Certificate and CB Test Report	NCB
4. Recognise abroad	Other member bodies accept the package as a basis for their national process	Receiving NCB
5. Convert to national approval	Delta testing for national differences, document review, national mark issued	Receiving NCB

The key economic idea sits in steps 2 and 4. The expensive activity, the full laboratory test campaign, happens once. The later national steps reduce to a document review plus, at most, a limited delta test for whatever the receiving country requires beyond the IEC baseline.

The role of national differences

A CB Test Report is written against the international IEC standard. But countries are not identical: mains voltage, plug and socket systems, climatic conditions and local regulation differ. Each member country therefore declares its national differences (also called national deviations) to the IECEE, and these are listed and appended to the report when requested.

A well-planned CB campaign asks the test lab to evaluate the product against the IEC standard and the national differences of every target country up front. Doing so means the receiving body finds the evidence it needs already in the report, and the delta testing shrinks toward zero. Forgetting a country's national differences at test time is the classic reason a CB conversion stalls and extra testing is ordered later.

Which product categories are covered

The IECEE files its work into product categories, each tied to a family of IEC standards and identified by a short category code that appears on the CB Test Certificate. The table below lists the most common categories for electronics and appliances. It is illustrative, not exhaustive.

Category (typical)	Reference IEC standard	Example products
Information technology, audio/video	IEC 62368-1	IT equipment, AV gear, most modern electronics
Household and similar appliances	IEC 60335 series	Kitchen, cleaning, comfort appliances
Luminaires and lighting	IEC 60598 series	Fixed and portable luminaires, LED drivers
Measuring, control, laboratory	IEC 61010-1	Lab instruments, process control gear
Medical electrical equipment	IEC 60601 series	Medical devices with electrical function
Batteries	IEC 62133-2	Lithium and other secondary cells/packs
Installation accessories, connectors	various IEC	Plugs, sockets, connectors, cabling
Capacitors and components	various IEC	Safety capacitors, electronic components

For the dominant electronics category, the move from the old IEC 60950-1 and IEC 60065 to the unified hazard-based standard IEC 62368-1 is now complete. If your product is IT or audio/video equipment, your CB campaign will almost certainly run against IEC 62368-1. The engineering rationale of that standard is covered in detail in the guide on IEC 62368-1 safety engineering.

Beyond the core safety scheme, the IECEE runs adjacent programmes, notably for energy efficiency and for photovoltaics, and a separate EMC programme for exchanging electromagnetic compatibility results where both bodies participate.

Certificate versus report: two documents, two roles

A frequent source of confusion is the difference between the two deliverables. They are issued together but serve different purposes, and a receiving body needs both.

Document	What it contains	What it proves
CB Test Certificate	One-page attestation: product identity, IEC standard and edition, product category, issuing NCB, date	That a recognised NCB attests conformity to the cited standard
CB Test Report	Every test clause, measured values, photographs, critical-components list, construction details	How conformity was demonstrated, clause by clause

The certificate is the headline; the report is the evidence. A receiving NCB reads the certificate to confirm the scope, then reads the report to check the product against its own national differences and decide whether any delta testing is needed. Supplying the certificate alone is not enough: without the report, the receiving body cannot map your product onto its national requirements, and the conversion stalls.

The critical-components list inside the report deserves special attention. It records the safety-relevant parts (transformers, optocouplers, the mains inlet, insulation systems) by manufacturer and type, often with their own component certificates. Changing one of these components later is the most common trigger for a report amendment, so keeping that list accurate across the product's life is part of maintaining the CB package.

The network of member bodies

The CB Scheme works because a large number of countries take part. Membership operates at two levels:

a member body is the national institution that represents a country in the IECEE and is entitled to recognise CB Test Certificates;
within each member body, one or more National Certification Bodies are designated, each scoped to specific product categories, and each is linked to one or more accepted CB Testing Laboratories.

A test only becomes a CB Test Certificate if it is performed under an NCB with an accepted CBTL for that product category. A competent commercial lab that is not part of this structure cannot, on its own, produce a CB package, regardless of its ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation. The relationship between accreditation (technical competence) and recognition (the right to issue scheme documents) is exactly the distinction drawn in the accreditation guide and in the glossary entry on ISO/IEC 17025.

The participating countries span the major manufacturing and consumer regions, including the United States, most of the European Union, the United Kingdom, China, Korea, India, Japan, the Gulf states and many others. The authoritative, current list of member bodies and their NCBs is published by the IECEE; it changes over time, so it should always be checked at the source rather than memorised.

Acceptance is mutual but not automatic

Recognition under the CB Scheme means a receiving body accepts the test data. It does not mean it skips its own certification act. Every member body retains the right to apply its national differences and to issue (or refuse) its own national mark. The scheme removes duplicate testing, not national sovereignty over market access. This is why a CB package is described as an input to national certification rather than a certificate that travels unchanged across borders.

How it accelerates KC, CCC, BIS and SASO

The practical value of the CB Scheme shows up most clearly when you map a single CB package onto several national routes at once. The table summarises how the major Asian and Gulf schemes treat a CB package.

National scheme	Country	How the CB package helps
KC	South Korea	Accepted as safety evidence under KATS; national differences and Korean documentation still apply
CCC (3C)	China	CB report accepted by CCC bodies; factory inspection and Chinese deviations remain
BIS	India	CB report supports the BIS application; in-country sample testing under the Indian deviations is often still required
SASO	Saudi Arabia	CB package feeds the SASO/SABER conformity route for covered electrical products

For Korea, the CB report shortens the safety side of the KC route, although the radio side is handled separately, as detailed in the guide on the KC mark in South Korea. For China, the CB report is a recognised input to the CCC process, but the mandatory factory inspection and Chinese national differences still apply, as explained in the CCC / 3C product safety guide. For India, the CB report supports a BIS filing, though in-country testing under Indian deviations is frequently still required, a point developed in the India BIS, TEC and WPC guide.

The pattern is consistent: the CB package collapses the safety testing step everywhere it is accepted, while each country keeps its own administrative procedure (local representative, factory audit, labelling, fees). You plan the global launch as one test campaign feeding many national filings.

Cost and time: testing once versus per country

The economic case is straightforward arithmetic. Without the CB Scheme, a product sold in five countries could in principle face five separate safety test campaigns, each consuming lab time, samples and engineering support. With the CB Scheme, you run one campaign and then pay, per country, mainly for review and any delta testing against national differences.

Approach	Testing cost profile	Schedule profile
Per-country testing	Full safety campaign repeated in each market	Sequential or parallel campaigns, longest pole per market
CB Scheme	One full campaign, then per-country delta only	One critical-path test campaign, short national tails

The exact savings depend on the number of markets, the product complexity and how many national differences trigger delta testing. The structural point holds regardless of the numbers: the more markets you target, the larger the relative advantage of testing once. For a product aimed at a single market, the CB route may add little; for a product aimed at five or ten, it is usually decisive.

A second, less obvious benefit is consistency. Because every national approval traces back to the same CB Test Report, the technical story of the product is identical everywhere. There is one set of construction data, one set of critical components, one configuration that has been tested. That coherence reduces the risk of contradictory findings between markets and simplifies later design changes, since a change is re-evaluated against one report rather than several.

The limits of the CB Scheme

The CB Scheme is powerful, but it is bounded. Treating it as a universal passport is the most common and most expensive misunderstanding.

It covers safety, not EMC or radio. The core scheme is about electrical safety against IEC standards. EMC results can be exchanged only under the separate IECEE EMC programme, and only where the destination body participates. Radio (RF) type approval, the kind governed by FCC rules in the US or the RED in the EU, is entirely outside the CB Scheme. A connected product still needs its radio approvals done independently.
A CB Test Certificate is not a market authorisation. You cannot place it on the product as a mark, and it does not by itself permit sale anywhere. It is an input document that must be converted into the national certification of each market.
Some countries still require in-country testing. National differences, mandatory local sampling (as often seen with BIS) or factory inspection (as with CCC) can re-introduce testing or audits that the CB package does not remove.
Local marks remain mandatory. Even when a CB package is fully accepted, the product must still bear the relevant national mark (KC, CCC, and so on) and meet local labelling and language rules.
Recognition is per category and per body. An NCB recognised for one product category is not automatically recognised for another, and not every member body recognises every other body for every category.

The honest framing is that the CB Scheme is a very effective accelerator of the safety portion of global market access, and nothing more. It sits alongside, not instead of, the radio, EMC, administrative and labelling work that each market demands.

Where the CB Scheme fits in a global plan

A realistic going-global plan treats the CB Scheme as the safety backbone and wraps the other workstreams around it.

Decide your target markets early, before testing. The national differences you ask the CBTL to evaluate depend on this list. Adding markets after the test campaign usually means delta testing.
Run the CB safety campaign against the right IEC standard (commonly IEC 62368-1 for electronics), requesting the national differences of every target country.
Run radio and EMC in parallel, on their own tracks, since the CB Scheme does not carry them.
Convert the CB package into each national certification, supplying the local representative, factory information and labelling each scheme requires.
Maintain one source of truth. Keep the CB Test Report as the master safety document so that design changes are assessed once and propagated to every market.

This sequencing turns a daunting multi-country matrix into one critical-path test campaign with short national tails, which is exactly the outcome the IECEE designed the scheme to produce.

Verifying a CB certificate

Because the CB package is an input that others rely on, its authenticity matters. The IECEE publishes online databases of issued certificates and of member bodies and their recognised laboratories. A receiving body, a customer or an auditor can look up a CB Test Certificate to confirm it is genuine, current and issued for the stated product category. When you receive a CB certificate from a supplier (for a component or sub-assembly you integrate), checking it against the IECEE database is good practice before you rely on it in your own technical file.