CMFAS RES 5 vs RES 1A and RES 2A: Which Rules Paper?

A lot of CMFAS confusion comes from one wrong assumption: that RES 5 is the rules paper and everything else is product knowledge. It isn’t. RES 5 is a rules paper — the one on the financial advisory side. There is an entire second family of rules papers on the capital markets side, administered by a different body, and if you are heading into a securities or derivatives dealing role, that family is the one you need to read about.

The split that actually matters: two Acts, two examiners

Candidates often try to sort CMFAS papers by subject — insurance over here, securities over there. That is not how the framework is organised. The dividing line is which Act your appointment falls under, and the two Acts have separate competency notices: FAA-N26 under the Financial Advisers Act, and SFA 04-N22 under the Securities and Futures Act. Both came into effect on 1 April 2024.

That split runs all the way down to who runs your exam. The Institute of Banking and Finance administers the capital markets examinations. The Singapore College of Insurance states it is the administrator of the CMFAS examinations for the financial advisory and insurance industry — RES 5, M8, M8A, M9, M9A, CM-CIS, CM-LIP and CM-LIC. Two websites, two sets of study guides, two sets of announcements.

The practical consequence is worth stating plainly. If you are an SFA-side dealer reading an SCI announcement about RES 5 pass marks, none of it governs your paper. The reverse is equally true. Before you trust any detail you read online, check which body owns the module it describes.

If you have not yet worked out which regulated activity you will be appointed for, start with the role-by-role module map — this article assumes you already know you are on the capital markets side and are trying to pin down the specific rules paper.

The capital markets rules papers, and what each one is for

IBF’s announcement of the new CMFAS examinations names the papers explicitly. Here is the current line-up on the capital markets side, with the module each one replaced where a predecessor existed.

Two features of that table are easy to miss.

The first is the exchange-membership axis. On both the securities and the derivatives lines, the paper you sit depends on whether your firm is an exchange member. RES 1A and RES 2A are the exchange-member papers; RES 1B and RES 2B are the non-exchange-member equivalents. This is a firm-level fact about your employer, not something you can infer from your job description — which is exactly why candidates get it wrong when they copy a colleague’s paper list.

The second is that the 2024 changes were not purely cosmetic. Alongside the renames, IBF introduced examinations that had no earlier equivalent, including RES 2B, RES 12B and a set of exchange-specific add-on modules: RES 1BE1 for Singapore Exchange — Securities Trading Limited, RES 2BE1 for Singapore Exchange — Derivatives Trading Limited, RES 2BE2 for ICE Futures Singapore, and RES 2BE3 for Asia Pacific Exchange (APEX). And one module went the other way: Module 4B, the corporate finance paper limited to debt securities, ceased to be offered.

RESP 10 is the odd one out

Every other paper above is rules-only, with product knowledge sitting in separate CM examinations. RESP 10 is not. The extra “P” in the code is doing real work: it stands for product knowledge, and the full name — Rules, Ethics, Skills and Product Knowledge for REIT Management — tells you the paper carries both halves in a single sitting.

If you are a REIT management candidate, this is the single most useful thing to know before you plan your revision. You are not preparing a rules paper; you are preparing a rules paper and a product paper at once, and the study time should reflect that.

Where RES 5 actually fits

Now the comparison the search results keep muddling. RES 5 — Rules, Ethics and Skills for Financial Advisory Services — is the FAA-side rules paper. SCI’s examination page describes it as required for those intending to advise others on securities, units in a collective investment scheme and exchange-traded derivatives contracts, or to provide advice on and arrange life insurance policies.

Read that carefully, because it is the source of the confusion. RES 5 does cover advising on securities — but as an advisory activity under the Financial Advisers Act. If your role is dealing in capital markets products under the SFA rather than advising under the FAA, the securities content in RES 5 is not a substitute for RES 1A or RES 1B. Same underlying market, different regime, different paper.

There is genuine subject overlap, which makes the trap worse. Both sides examine CPF investment scheme material, market conduct and the prevention of financial crime. Candidates who half-remember content from one syllabus and apply it to the other tend to be confident and wrong at the same time — the most expensive combination in a multiple-choice exam.

For a full breakdown of what the advisory-side paper demands, see the RES 5 exam guide. For how the rules and product buckets fit together across the whole framework, the CMFAS exam guide sets out the structure.

The pass marks are not the same on both sides

This is where assuming “CMFAS is 75%” gets people into trouble.

IBF’s announcement stated the passing marks as 75% for the CMFAS RES and RESP examination modules, and 70% for the CMFAS product knowledge examination modules. SCI’s announcement set out a different structure for RES 5: Part I at 75% and Part II at 80%, with both parts required.

So a securities dealer preparing RES 1A and an adviser preparing RES 5 are not working to the same standard, even though both papers carry a RES code. Treat these figures as the published position at the time of the 2024 transition and confirm the current requirement with the body that administers your paper — requirements change, and the announcement you found on a forum may not be the latest. The pass rate and difficulty guide covers what those thresholds mean in practice for revision.

A three-question test for finding your paper

You can usually narrow the list in about a minute.

Which Act is your appointment under? Advising under the Financial Advisers Act points to RES 5 on the SCI side. Dealing, fund management, corporate finance or REIT management under the Securities and Futures Act points to the IBF papers.

Securities, derivatives, or something else? Within the IBF set, securities dealing points to the RES 1 line, derivatives to the RES 2 line, fund management to RES 3, corporate finance to RES 4, REIT management to RESP 10.

Is your firm an exchange member? That decides A versus B on the RES 1 and RES 2 lines, and whether any add-on module applies. Ask compliance rather than guessing — this one is not visible from your seat.

Once your paper is fixed, the registration and exam day guide covers the logistics.

Practising the rules papers

Rules papers reward a particular kind of preparation. They are dense with thresholds, exceptions and “must / must not” obligations that feel familiar on a second reading and evaporate under exam pressure. Reading the study guide again is the least efficient thing you can do with your last two weeks; answering questions and reviewing every wrong answer is the most efficient.

One honest note on scope. CMFAS KAKI does not have question banks for the capital markets modules — no RES 1A, RES 2A, RES 3, RES 4 or RESP 10. If those are your papers, work from IBF’s current study guides and any provider that publishes material written for the post-2024 syllabus, and check the publication date before you buy. If your papers are RES 5, M9, M9A or HI, the app covers those with original exam-style questions and per-module wrong-answer review — you can see what’s included here.

Module names, formats, pass marks and requirements can change — always confirm the latest details with the official examination body before you register. CMFAS KAKI provides original practice questions and is not affiliated with MAS, IBF, SCI or any examination institute.