Recruiting financial advisors: who to look for, and what MAS requires

Look for people who can get through the months before the work pays, who know people and who take a no well. Your own advisers and clients are the first place to ask. Check MAS's entry rules before you spend an interview on anyone, explain how your contract pays with no income figure attached, and plan the first 90 days before they start.

As of November 2026. The licensing rules below come from MAS's own pages.

The job is selling on commission with you as their coach, so ask questions a CV can't answer:

• How would you cover your bills while your first cases are still unpaid?
• Who are ten people you'd happily call about this work?
• When were you last turned down for something you wanted, and what did you do next?
• What would you do with a week that has no appointments booked?

Some answers should stop you. Watch for a candidate who only wants commission on their family's policies, who can't say how they'd cover the lean months, or who expects you to bring the clients. Vague answers about past financial trouble matter too, because MAS's fit and proper test looks at financial soundness and honesty, and you'll have to certify them.

Keep every candidate on one list with a stage and a date for the next conversation. Recruiting stalls in the gaps, when nobody has spoken to a candidate for three weeks.

A new adviser becomes an appointed representative of your firm under the Financial Advisers Act. MAS's Notice FAA-N26, in force since 1 April 2024, sets the minimums.

Three points tend to get missed:

• The exam requirement applies before someone is an appointed representative. The modules are run by the Singapore College of Insurance or the Institute of Banking and Finance, and MAS points to them for syllabus and format.
• A RES5 pass stops being valid if they don't start providing financial advisory services as an appointed representative within three years of passing.
• MAS puts the onus on your firm. Under FSG-G01, where a firm has to ensure someone is fit and proper, "the onus is on the former to establish to the satisfaction of MAS that the latter is fit and proper."

Once they're appointed, their name goes on MAS's public register of representatives. MoneySense tells clients to look their adviser up there, so check the entry is right.

An experienced adviser relocating to Singapore can start as a provisional representative through Form 3B. MAS asks for at least 3 years of relevant working experience, and the exams have to be met within 3 months of appointment.

Candidates will ask what they'll earn. Don't give a figure, a range or anyone else's income, and don't sketch what a good year could look like. A number on a whiteboard turns into a promise once it's in their head.

Walk them through the contract in this order:

1. Go through how it pays, part by part, and name only what it actually pays.
2. Say when commission arrives after a case is written, and when it can be clawed back.
3. Tell them plainly that the early months pay little or nothing until cases are issued and paid.
4. Ask them to work out what they need each month to cover their bills, and how long their savings last.
5. Give them the contract to take away and read, and let them come back with questions.

If a candidate pushes for a number, say you can't give one and tell them why: it depends on what they do, and you won't promise an outcome. Someone who walks away over that was joining for the wrong reason.

Plan this before they start, and put the reviews in both calendars on the first day.

The targets here are activity targets, because that's what they control. Fair dealing still comes first: MAS's 2026 information paper restates its expectation that representatives don't "apply aggressive or pressure sales tactics".

Look at their activity each week, while a slow week can still be talked about. A first-year adviser closes few cases but makes plenty of calls and appointments, so recognise those long before any commission arrives.

Give the weekly one-on-one thirty minutes for the numbers, what's blocking them and one thing to practise. A short note from them each week on what worked will often tell you who's struggling before their numbers do.

At six months, go through what they've actually done against the activity targets you agreed. Keep the talk on what they've done, and leave out where it might lead.

• Recruiting on a big number, whether it's yours, a top producer's or a slide's.
• Hiring everyone who says yes, when a weak recruit takes months of your coaching.
• Leaving the exams to the recruit instead of booking them together in week one.
• Letting anyone advise before they've passed and your firm has notified MAS.
• Saving your coaching for the end of the month, when the month has gone.
• Recruiting in bursts, so the candidate list goes quiet for a quarter.

Palby Sales Tracker doesn't track candidates. It starts once they've joined, from an invite link or a request that a leader approves. Each set, opening and closing is one tap on their phone, and the board moves within seconds.

Your Needs you today list puts people in order: no entry for 3 days first, then furthest behind their weekly goal, then trending down over 30 days. The 1:1 card fills in their last two weeks against their goal, their streak and what you asked them to do last time. See how it fits keeping new advisers past year one.

• MAS, Notice FAA-N26, Competency Requirements for Representatives of Financial Advisers (issued 28 September 2023, in effect 1 April 2024), read 2 November 2026
• MAS, Guidelines on Fit and Proper Criteria, FSG-G01 (revised 30 May 2025), read 2 November 2026
• MAS, Appointing a Representative for Licensed Financial Advisers or Exempt Financial Advisers, read 2 November 2026
• MAS, Information Paper on Good Practices of Market Conduct Controls in the Financial Advisory Industry (26 May 2026), read 2 November 2026
• MoneySense, Financial advisory process, read 2 November 2026