You have recruited someone. They said yes, they are excited, and right now they have more energy for this than they will have at any other point in the first year. The first ninety days are about spending that energy well — because it does not renew. A recruit who stalls early does not just lose time; they lose the belief that they are going to make it, and that is much harder to get back than a fortnight.
Most agencies know this and still lose people in the first quarter, usually to the same handful of avoidable stalls. What follows is the order that keeps momentum, and where each stage tends to break.
Stage one: the exams, and nothing else that can wait
Before a new adviser can advise on or sell anything, they have to clear the CMFAS papers. For a standard new life-insurance and financial advisory representative in Singapore that means RES5 (the rules and regulations for financial advisory services), M9 and M9A (life insurance and investment-linked policies), and HI (health insurance). They are administered by the Singapore College of Insurance, and they sit under the requirements the Monetary Authority of Singapore sets for representatives. This is the gate. Nothing else in the plan matters until it is cleared.
It is also the first place agencies lose the people they just recruited — not because the papers are impossible, but because a keen recruit left to "study in their own time" drifts. Weeks pass, the exam gets booked on optimism rather than evidence, they fail one paper, and the person who arrived certain they would make it now privately suspects they will not. That is the moment a good recruit becomes a re-sit statistic, and it happens in week three, not week thirty.
So treat the exams as the first job, with a real finish line. We have written the full version of how to get a cohort through the first time — how to get your new advisers through CMFAS the first time — but the short version for the onboarding plan is this:
- ✓Book on evidence, not enthusiasm. A run of solid, timed mock scores over the real format — including RES5's two-part bar, which you clear each section on its own — is the signal that says ready. "I think I'm okay" is the signal that fails cohorts.
- ✓Set a date, then work backwards. An open-ended "study when you can" is how a fortnight becomes two months. A target sitting date gives the whole thing a shape and gives you something to protect.
- ✓Watch the drift. The recruit who has gone quiet on their practice is the one about to stall. You want to know a week before the exam is booked, not the day the result comes back.
Get this stage right and everything after it is easier, because the person is still moving and still believes. Get it wrong and there is no stage two.
Stage two: product and process, in that order
Passing the papers means someone is licensed. It does not mean they know your products, and it certainly does not mean they know how your agency actually works — how a case gets submitted, who checks it, what the compliance steps are, where things go wrong. This is the knowledge the exams do not test, and it is the difference between a licensed person and a useful one.
The trap here is treating it as a document dump — a folder of PDFs and a "let me know if you have questions". Nobody learns a process by reading it. They learn it by doing it once with someone watching. So the useful version of this stage is small and concrete:
- ✓The products they will actually sell first, not the whole shelf. A new adviser needs to be genuinely fluent in two or three things, not vaguely aware of twenty.
- ✓One real case, walked end to end. Sit with them while a submission goes through — the forms, the checks, the handoffs, the thing that always gets sent back. That single walk-through teaches more than a week of reading.
- ✓What "good" looks like in a note. How your agency records what was discussed and recommended, because those records may need to stand up long after everyone has forgotten the meeting. Set the standard now, while there is only one client to get right.
This stage overlaps naturally with the next one, and it should. The point is not to complete a syllabus before they meet a client; it is to know enough not to embarrass themselves in the first meeting.
Stage three: the first client conversations, supervised
There is a version of onboarding where the new adviser passes their exams, gets handed a phone, and is told to go build a pipeline. It is the fastest way to burn the confidence you spent two months building. The first few real conversations should happen where a mistake is safe — which means with a manager or senior adviser in the room, or on the call.
What supervision is actually for at this stage is less about catching errors and more about two things:
- ✓Showing them it is survivable. The first fact-find feels enormous. Watching someone experienced do it, then doing one themselves with backup, turns an intimidating unknown into a thing they have now done. That shift is most of the battle.
- ✓Correcting habits before they set. The way someone handles an objection, records a meeting, or follows up after a first conversation hardens fast. It is far cheaper to shape it in week six than to unpick it in year two.
The mistake to avoid is supervising forever. The goal is to make yourself unnecessary as quickly as is safe — a few conversations watched closely, then a longer leash, then a check-in. A recruit kept on training wheels too long learns that they are not trusted, which is its own kind of momentum killer.
Stage four: onto the system, early
This is the stage most agencies leave until last, and it is the one that quietly determines whether the first ninety days compound into a second ninety or evaporate. The instinct is to let a new adviser "focus on selling" and worry about the system later. The problem is that habits form in the first weeks of doing the job, and a habit you skip at the start is one you fight to install for years.
A new adviser has a rare advantage here: they have no old way of doing things to unlearn. They have never run their business out of a notebook and a phone, so if the very first client they log goes into the team's system — properly, from day one — that simply becomes how the job is done. Wait six months and you are asking someone to migrate a working method they have already built in their head, which almost nobody does willingly.
The habits worth setting from the first real client:
- ✓Every meeting written up, in the system, the same day. Not because a manager is watching, but because a note written two days later is a note half-invented. Set the standard on client number one.
- ✓Reviews and follow-ups live on a list, not in memory. A new adviser with thirty clients can hold it all in their head. That is exactly why now is the time to build the habit of not relying on that — because at three hundred clients the head stops working and, by then, the habit has to already exist.
- ✓The system reads back to them, not just collects from them. This is the part that makes the habit stick. If logging a meeting means the system hands them a follow-up list and a briefing before the next one, they feed it because it feeds them. If it only ever asks, they will abandon it the first busy week — the same way experienced advisers quietly abandon the CRM they were given.
The whole reason to do this early is momentum again: a new adviser who builds on the team's system from the first client never has a private spreadsheet to migrate, never has a pipeline that lives in their head, and never becomes invisible to the manager trying to help them. What a good system should actually give an adviser back — and why so many are abandoned — is its own piece: what a financial adviser actually needs from a system.
The manager's real job across all ninety days
None of this requires you to become a full-time trainer. Your job across the first ninety days is narrower and more useful: protect the momentum. Watch for the stall — the quiet on exam practice, the recruit who passed but has not had a first conversation two weeks later, the meetings not being written up. Each of those is a small leak, and a small leak in the first quarter is how a promising recruit becomes a person who is technically still on the roster and producing nothing.
The stages are a sequence for a reason: exams first because they are the gate, product and process next because a licence is not competence, supervised conversations before independence because the first ones decide whether they believe they can do this, and the system early because habits set once and are expensive to change. Skip a stage or run them out of order and the person slows down — and a new adviser who has slowed down is the hardest thing in this business to speed back up.
The honest short version
A new adviser arrives with more momentum than they will ever have again, and the first ninety days either bank it or waste it. Get them through the CMFAS papers first, on evidence rather than optimism, because that is the gate and the first place people fall. Give them the products and the process by doing, not reading. Put them in front of clients while a mistake is still safe. And get them onto the team's system from the very first client, while the habit is free to install. Do those four things in that order and you keep a recruit moving. Get the order wrong and you will spend year one trying to restart someone who stalled in week three.
Common questions
Exams first, then product and process, then supervised client conversations, then the team's system — but the system habits should start with the very first real client rather than being left to the end. The exams come first because they are the gate: a new adviser cannot advise or sell until the CMFAS papers are cleared, and it is the first place agencies lose recruits.
For a standard new life-insurance and financial advisory representative in Singapore, the core papers are RES5 (rules and regulations for financial advisory services), M9 and M9A (life insurance and investment-linked policies), and HI (health insurance), administered by the Singapore College of Insurance. The exact set depends on what they will be licensed to advise on. Nothing else in the onboarding plan matters until these are cleared.
Almost always because momentum breaks and is not restored. The two most common breaks are failing a CMFAS paper booked on optimism rather than mock evidence, and sitting idle after passing with no supervised client conversations to build on. A recruit who stalls early loses not just time but the belief they will make it, and that is far harder to recover than a fortnight.
Straight away, from the first real client. The instinct to let them focus on selling and add the system later backfires, because habits form in the first weeks. A new adviser has no old method to unlearn, so logging client one into the team's system properly simply becomes how the job is done. Wait six months and you are asking them to migrate a working method they have built in their head, which almost nobody does.
Enough to make the first few conversations safe, then less. The point of early supervision is to show a recruit the job is survivable and to correct habits before they harden — not to catch every error forever. Keep someone on training wheels too long and they learn they are not trusted, which stalls them just as surely as being thrown in unprepared.
Sources
- Singapore College of Insurance (SCI) — CMFAS examinations — the administering body
- Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) — requirements for financial adviser representatives
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