Alerts and Updates for CMFAS RES 5 Rules, Ethics and Skills for Financial Advisory Services (Singapore)

RES 5 is the rules and ethics module for financial advisory work under MAS Notice FAA-N26; the CEA paper licenses property salespersons. Nothing in the CMFAS RES series, which runs RES 1A, 1B, 1BE1, 2A, 2B, 2BE1 to 2BE3, 3, 4, 12B and RESP 10 on the IBF side plus RES 5 at SCI, covers real estate agency law.

RES 5 itself has no calendar; the dated entries above are regime changes, not sittings. The two CEA rows are included only because the mislabelled exam name sends candidates here; that examination does run to fixed dates and its interest-indication window has already passed for the 2026 sitting.

Start with the naming problem, because it is the single biggest cause of wasted money here. RES 5 is a Singapore College of Insurance module on the rules, ethics and skills of financial advisory services. The letters RES in CMFAS stand for rules, ethics and skills, not real estate. Anyone who booked RES 5 intending to sell property has booked the wrong examination from the wrong body.

Ask what you will be licensed to do. If the answer is advising on securities, collective investment schemes, derivatives contracts, foreign exchange contracts or life insurance policies as a licensed or exempt financial adviser or an appointed representative, RES 5 is the rules paper and MAS Notice FAA-N26 governs your module set. If the answer is marketing property and handling conveyancing-adjacent work for an estate agency, you need the Council for Estate Agencies salesperson examination, which is administered by NTUC LearningHub and requires a valid Certificate of RES Course Completion before you can even register. The two sit under different regulators, different fee schedules and different examination calendars, and passing one does nothing for the other.

SCI requires at least 75 per cent in Part I and at least 80 per cent in Part II. Part II is only 40 questions, so 80 per cent means 32 correct and the ninth mistake fails the whole paper regardless of how well Part I went. That asymmetry matters because Part II is the professional ethics, client relationships and financial planning half, which candidates typically treat as the soft, read-it-once section. It is in fact the tighter constraint. Part I, at 110 questions and 75 per cent, allows 27 wrong answers across the regulatory framework, the Financial Advisers Act, MAS Notices, anti-money-laundering rules, guidelines, collective investment schemes and market conduct. Revise Part II as if it were the harder paper, because arithmetically it is.

The new CMFAS examinations took effect on 1 April 2024 and study materials were released on 1 February 2024. RES 5 is longer than the module it replaced: 150 questions in 180 minutes against M5's 100 questions in 120 minutes, and the single aggregate pass mark gave way to the split 75 and 80 per cent requirement. The M5 examination ceased after 28 March 2024. Anyone working from second-hand notes, a borrowed study text or a course outline written before 2024 is preparing for a paper that no longer exists. SCI notes that updates to the study text are incorporated into the eBook, with a version control record, so check the version before relying on it.

CMFAS is split across two administrators, and this is where catalogue errors creep in. The Institute of Banking and Finance runs the capital-markets rules modules, RES 1A and 1B for securities dealers, RES 2A and 2B for derivatives dealers, the exchange add-ons RES 1BE1 and RES 2BE1 to 2BE3, RES 3 for fund management, RES 4 for corporate finance, RES 12B, RESP 10 for REIT management, and the product modules CM-EIP, CM-SIP and CM-CMP. The Singapore College of Insurance runs RES 5 plus the insurance and investment-linked product modules M8, M8A, M9, M9A and the combined CM-CIS, CM-LIP and CM-LIC. Registering on the wrong portal is a common false start.

RES 5 is S$185.30 for SCI or IBF members and S$218.00 for others, inclusive of registration fee and GST, with S$18.53 added for sessions after 5 p.m. on weekdays or at any time at weekends. Since 1 April 2024 a re-sit costs the same as a first attempt, so there is no financial penalty for failing, only the three hours. Passing credits three CPD hours. Sittings are on demand rather than scheduled, so the binding deadline is usually the one set by an employer's compliance department. Exemption applications and administrative appeals attract separate charges, revised by SCI with effect from 1 August 2026.