Financial Industry Competency Standards Programs (FICS)

Assessment

Important things you should take note before the assessment:

Click here to register for the assessment.

For existing students who have attended for the training programs before December 2009, please click here for a separate application form.

Purpose

The FICS is developed by the industry, for the industry. It has the strong support of leading financial institutions and industry associations, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA). It comprises a set of standards and curriculum that relates to the competencies required for practitioners in specific job roles. The framework covers the entire financial services industry, for high-end professionals and operational level practitioners, involved in both retail and wholesale activities. It is forward-looking such that skill sets developed today can meet challenges of the future.

For financial institutions, the FICS can bring value to the following areas:

Provides a structured and objective framework to assess the adequacy of the skills sets of financial practitioners, and channel efforts more effectively to bridge the gaps in their skills.

At a strategic and national level, it helps identify impending skills shortages so that people can be up skilled and trained more quickly to meet future needs.

Staff can know what is expected and how they will be assessed.

Leverage on quality external training programmes that have been accredited.

For financial practitioners, the FICS can bring value to the following areas:

Obtain personal and professional certification that is recognized by the industry, hence enhancing employability.

Professional development - using the framework as a transparent and structured roadmap to upgrade to higher job levels or to move to new job areas.

Back To Top

Scope

The FICS framework sets out clearly what are the competency requirements for the different jobs, and how training, assessment and certification should be conducted. Being industry-wide, the framework facilitates ease of identification of common competencies using a common platform for standards, assessment and certification.

Currently, RMI offers assessment programs for the competence units (CUs) in the following job families in risk management (Job Role V):

1. Market Risk Management

CU1: Develop and review market risk objective and framework
CU2: Develop and monitor market risk policy and procedure
CU3: Identify, measure, monitor and control risks
CU4: Create and sustain awareness of market risk and control throughout the organisation
CU6 Acquire and apply financial services industry and product knowledge
CU7: Comply with financial services legislations, regulations and industry codes of practice

2. Market Risk Analytics

CU1: Evaluate and validate market risk models and review valuation methodologies
CU2: Provide technical advisory to market risk, product control and treasury units
CU3: Perform quantitative valuation and market risk research
CU5: Acquire and apply financial services industry and product knowledge
CU6: Comply with financial services legislations, regulations and industry codes of practice

3. Credit Risk Management (Corporate Banking)

CU2: Develop and maintain credit risk policies and procedures
CU3: Identify, measure, monitor and control credit risks
CU4: Create and sustain awareness of credit risks and risk control throughout the organisation
CU6 Acquire and apply wholesale banking industry and product knowledge
CU7: Comply with wholesale banking legislations, regulations and industry codes of practice

4. Credit Analytics

CU1: Build and maintain default risk models for making credit approval decisions
CU2: Develop and implement risk-based credit pricing strategies and identify cross-sell/up-sell opportunities
CU3: Develop and implement credit rating systems for setting limits, performing credit loss forecasting and provisioning
CU4: Develop and implement credit monitoring models and analyze data for surveillance of the credit business
CU6: Acquire and apply financial services industry and product knowledge
CU7: Comply with financial services legislations, regulations and industry codes of practice

5. Operational Risk Management

CU1: Develop, implement and maintain operational risk management framework
CU2: Develop, implement and maintain corporate operational risk management policies and standards
CU3: Develop, implement and maintain operational risk management tools and measurement methodology
CU4: Create and sustain awareness of operational risk and control throughout the organisation
CU6: Acquire and apply financial services industry and product knowledge
CU7: Comply with legislations, regulations and industry codes of practice

Please click here for a detailed list of competence units (CUs) under job role V and how they are covered in our training program.

Back To Top

Qualification Outcomes

The FICS is a comprehensive quality assurance framework with a certification system that aims at raising the quality of the financial workforce. It comprises a set of standards and curriculum that relates to the competencies required for practitioners in specific job roles. Certification under the FICS framework is defined as the process for assessing, validating and recognizing specific job role competencies as determined by the FICS competency standards. The achievement of certification is indicative of one's ability to handle the demands of the financial services job he/she is certified in.

Upon satisfactory completion and passing an assessment session, a Statement of Attainment (SOA) will be issued to the participant. If the participant is found 'not yet competent,' RMI will give feedback on his/her performance to help identify the skill gaps so that the participant can still plan for further improvement.

FICS participants who have obtained the FICS SOAs for all the relevant competencies of a job role can be awarded a Specialist Diploma for job role  VI. Participants with relevant working experience can also apply for FICP Certification, aiming for the recognition of professional achievementFor more information on the certification requirements, please click here.

Process

ALL applicants are required to apply for BOTH TRAINING AND ASSESSMENT for all modules in particular program(s) or on a modular basis for the respective program(s). An experienced participant, who has completed an ‘appropriate’ training course covering the content of a module, may be exempt from the module program and apply for assessment-only route. He/she must approach RMI for such an application and this is subject to RMI’s evaluation and approval.

Assessment comes right after each module's training classes. Revision class is also arranged after the training and before the assessment to help participants better prepare for the exams.

For job role V, each assessment will address one CU. Assessment usually incorporates (i) a paper-based examination consisting of multiple choice questions (MCQ) and/or essay questions (ii) a practicum assessment. The practicum assessment comprises of two components, a group assignment in the form of a group report and presentation, and an individual questions and answers (Q&A) session for which candidates will be asked between 3 to 7 questions to ensure fair distribution of work and sufficient scope of the assessment.

The assessment aims to collect relevant evidence from participants' answers to the examination questions. Such evidences will be checked against the FICS framework to measure if the participant is competent or not. During the assessment, the candidates would be assessed on both their understanding of the subject matter and their ability to apply the knowledge gained, in fulfilling the FICS competency requirements. The passing grade for each component of the assessment is 75%, 50% and 50% for the paper examination, group assignment and individual Q&A respectively. The weight age for these three parts are 50%, 20% and 30% respectively. A participant has to pass each component to pass i.e. failing any means failing the entire assessment.

RMI will not arrange specific make-up assessment for failed participants. However, they are encouraged to register for the next available assessment sessions.

All participants will be notified about the assessment results via registered mail. Before this, RMI will email all participants to remind them about the release of results. This will be approximately one month after the assessment is completed.

Back To Top

Time Schedule

Starting from 2010, RMI organizes FICS assessment programs two intakes  a year (i.e. January intake and June intake). Dates will be announced at least one month ahead of the assessment commencement.

PE - Paper Exam

PA - Practicum Assessment

*The assessment is conducted based on CU and the training is scheduled based on module. The listing of training modules here is to provide a mapping of coverage between the two programs for your easy reference.

Important Notice: The information pertaining to changes in assessment dates and assessment will be published on this page, if any. An email notification will be sent to all confirmed assessment participants.

Back To Top