RES 1A vs RES 1B vs RES 2A vs RES 2B vs RES 12B: Which CMFAS Exam Do You Need?

Four of the CMFAS Rules, Ethics and Skills papers exist for people who deal in capital markets products rather than advise on them: RES 1A, RES 1B, RES 2B and the combined RES 12B. They are administered by the Institute of Banking and Finance (IBF), not SCI, and they share most of their syllabus. Which one you sit depends on two questions: do you deal in securities, derivatives or both, and is your firm an exchange member?

The two questions that decide your paper

Format at a glance (as at September 2026)

Note what the last row means. RES 12B covers both syllabi but is the same length as either single paper, so each topic is tested more sparingly and there is less room to be weak in one half.

What each syllabus covers, and how much they overlap

IBF publishes seven chapters for each of RES 1B, RES 2A and RES 2B. Four of them are the same chapter in all three. RES 1A is RES 1B plus one extra chapter on the SGX-ST trading system; RES 2A is RES 2B with the SGX-DT trading and clearing chapter in place of the OTC derivatives chapter.

What the shared chapters actually test

• Industry and participants: the roles of MAS, the exchanges, clearing houses, CMS licence holders and representatives.
• Licensing and business operations:the Securities and Futures Act licensing regime, representative notification, fit-and-proper criteria, and the conduct-of-business rules a licensee's operations must meet.
• Market conduct: the market-misconduct offences — false trading, market rigging, manipulation, insider trading — and the civil and criminal consequences.
• Prevention of financial crimes: AML/CFT obligations for capital-markets intermediaries, customer due diligence, suspicious transaction reporting and the tipping-off offence.

Which should you sit first if you need both?

If your appointment will cover both securities and derivatives at a non-exchange member, RES 12B is one exam and one fee instead of two. The trade-off is breadth: you need the derivatives chapters (OTC products, their reporting and clearing rules, margin and counterparty risk) as well as the securities chapters, in one sitting. If your firm only needs one activity for now, sit the single paper; the shared chapters carry over when you add the other later.

What changed on 1 April 2024

The old Module 1A and 1B papers were replaced by RES 1A and RES 1B, and RES 2B and RES 12B are new papers introduced for non-exchange derivatives dealers. Old M1A or M1B notes cover a syllabus that no longer exists. See What is CMFAS? for the full module map.

Preparing on CMFASPrep

RES 1A, RES 1B, RES 2A, RES 2B and RES 12B are all live. They are built on one shared syllabus, so the chapters common to the papers are written once and your progress on them carries across exams — useful if you sit one paper now and add the other later.