Alerts and Updates for CMFAS M9A Life Insurance and Investment-Linked Policies II (Singapore)

Both modules are administered by the Singapore College of Insurance, not by the Institute of Banking and Finance, which handles the capital-markets RES and CM modules. Fees include the registration fee and GST; a peak-hour surcharge of S$18.53 applies after 5 p.m. on weekdays and all weekend sessions.

M9A has no national examination calendar. Candidates pick a seat from the slots SCI opens, so the only dates that matter are the fee and syllabus effective dates above and whatever deadline an employer's compliance department has set.

The commonest error is treating M9A as the life insurance paper. It is not. M9 is the life insurance paper; M9A is the add-on that covers investment-linked policies treated as structured, derivative-bearing products. Candidates who need to advise on plain life policies and buy M9A alone have bought the wrong hour.

SCI describes M9A as being for new or existing representatives of financial advisers who need to comply with the MAS requirement to possess the requisite knowledge to advise others on and arrange investment-linked life insurance policies. The applicable module set for any given person is governed by MAS Notice FAA-N26, and SCI tells candidates to check with their compliance department for the modules that apply to them rather than self-select. The same page directs candidates to the MAS website under Notice FAA-N26 for the list of approved exemptions. Practically, that means the authoritative answer to whether you need M9A lives with your firm's compliance function and the MAS notice, not with a course provider's marketing page.

SCI states that those intending to provide advice on or arrange life insurance policies must pass M9 together with Module 5, per MAS requirements. M9 is the 100-question, two-hour foundation covering life insurance concepts, premium setting, product classification, traditional products, riders, annuities, underwriting, policy servicing, claims, agency law, income tax implications and nomination, wills and trusts. M9A then layers structured products and derivatives on top of that base. Taking M9A cold, without the product classification and policy mechanics from M9, means meeting chapters on structured ILPs and portfolios of investments with an insurance wrapper without the vocabulary they assume. The sequencing is not formally enforced as a prerequisite on the SCI page, but the syllabus design plainly expects it.

The arithmetic is unforgiving in a way longer papers are not. At 50 questions and a 70 per cent pass mark, 35 correct answers are needed and the fifteenth wrong answer ends the attempt. There is no partial credit and no compensation across sections. With one hour on the clock, the budget is about 72 seconds per question, and chapter six is explicitly case studies, which consume more than their share of that time. The sensible tactic is to clear the definitional questions on structured products and derivatives quickly, bank those marks, and leave the case-study stem reading for a second pass rather than stalling on it early.

Since 1 April 2024 SCI has offered CM-LIP, which folds M9 and M9A into one sitting of 150 questions over 180 minutes, requiring at least 70 per cent. Taken separately, M9 and M9A cost S$109.00 each for members, so S$218.00 in total against S$239.80 for CM-LIP; for non-members it is S$261.60 against S$283.40. The combined paper is therefore slightly dearer but resolves everything in a single booking. The trade-off is risk concentration: a failure in a combined sitting puts the whole thing back on the calendar, whereas separate modules let a candidate bank M9 and re-sit only the shorter M9A. CM-LIC extends the same logic to M8 and M8A across 200 questions and 240 minutes.

Since 1 April 2024 there is no cheaper first-attempt rate and no penalty rate for re-sitting: S$109.00 for SCI or IBF members and S$130.80 for others, inclusive of the registration fee and GST. Add S$18.53 for any session after 5 p.m. on a weekday or at any time on a weekend, which is a real cost for candidates booking around a working day. Expect no certificate; SCI issues a result slip only, and one CPD hour is credited on a pass. Anyone who later needs documentary proof for a new employer should note that SCI's letter of certification and appeal charges were revised with effect from 1 August 2026.