SOCPA Regulations Study Guide: The Saudi Laws on the Paper, What Changed Since 2022, and a Study Plan

SOCPA exempts holders of the US CPA and several other foreign qualifications from some of its Fellowship papers. It never exempts anyone from Regulations. The reason is obvious once the syllabus is in front of you: nothing in any foreign qualification covers the Saudi Companies Law, the commercial register, the commercial courts, the bankruptcy procedures or the law that governs the accounting profession itself. This is the paper that makes the Fellowship Saudi, and it is the one candidates with strong international backgrounds most often underestimate.

It is also the paper that has changed most. Since 2022 the Kingdom has replaced its Companies Law, its Commercial Register Law, its Trade Names Law, its civil code and the law of the accounting profession, and amended its Labor Law. A textbook from 2021 is wrong on the majority of the syllabus. What follows is the map of the paper as Prepito's course outlines it, the instruments on it with what changed and when, and an eight-week plan built around memorisation, because that is what this paper rewards.

Use free SOCPA Regulations practice questions to check what you remember, then revisit the rules behind your mistakes. Questions and answer explanations are available in English and Arabic, with no account required.

The exam at a glance

Item	Laws
Subject	Laws (SOCPA's English name for the Regulations paper), one of the six Fellowship subjects
Format	50 multiple-choice questions in 120 minutes; no essay section
Length	2 hours
Score weighting	100% multiple choice; the essay section was removed from the third cycle of 2025
Passing score	60 out of 100
Sittings	Four cycles a year, every subject in every cycle; 2026: 5 to 8 April, 28 June to 1 July, 27 to 30 September, 20 to 23 December, registration about six weeks before each
Fees	SAR 1,000 first registration (SAR 500 for a later sitting) plus SAR 300 per subject
Language	Arabic or English, the candidate's choice, since the September 2025 cycle
Delivery	Computer-based at test centres in ten Saudi cities, booked through the National Center for Assessment (ETEC) e-services
Credit expiry	A pass lapses four calendar years and thirty days after the sitting date if the Fellowship is not completed by then

SOCPA publishes a minimum and a maximum weight for each topic area of the paper.

Topic area	Weight
Introduction to the study of laws	3 to 5%
Financial transactions	8 to 13%
Principles of commercial law: commercial activities, the merchant and his obligations, the general theory of commercial contracts	5 to 7%
Commercial laws	32 to 45%
Laws related to the profession	14 to 32%
The Law of the Profession of Accounting and Auditing	13 to 23%

What the paper covers

SOCPA publishes the official syllabus in Arabic, in its Fellowship examination topics document, which lists each law under the six topic areas weighted above, and sets it out skill by skill in its February 2026 guidance framework. The map below follows Prepito's course outline, which arranges the main instruments in five parts of its own rather than SOCPA's six; the note after the table says where the two differ and what the map leaves out.

Part	What sits inside it	Character
Financial transactions	Ownership, legal capacity, and the contracts of sale, lease, guarantee and partnership, mudaraba among them, under the Civil Transactions Law, with the conditions of sale in Islamic jurisprudence compared with the Law's	Conceptual; a vocabulary that the rest of the paper assumes
Principles of commercial law	Who is a merchant, commercial versus civil acts, the commercial register, trade names, commercial books, agency and brokerage	Definitions and thresholds
Commercial regulations in Saudi Arabia	The Companies Law, the Commercial Courts Law, the Bankruptcy Law, negotiable instruments, e-commerce	The heaviest part; forms, capital, governance, procedures and deadlines
Other commercial and professional regulations	The Labor Law, the Capital Market Law and the Capital Market Authority's regulations, competition, anti-concealment, franchise, and professional companies, now governed by the Companies Law, which superseded the Professional Companies Law	Broad; one or two questions each
The accounting and auditing profession and SOCPA	The Law of the Profession of Accounting and Auditing, SOCPA's establishment, licensing, quality review and discipline	Short, decidable, and the part every candidate should score fully on

SOCPA does publish the weighting, as a minimum and a maximum for each topic area in the weights table earlier in this guide, but it groups some laws differently from this map: the Commercial Courts Law sits under principles of commercial law; agency and brokerage, with the Capital Market, Competition and Franchise Laws, under the commercial laws; and the Labor Law and anti-concealment under the laws related to the profession. The commercial laws, the Companies Law among them, carry the most weight at 32 to 45%, and the profession law alone carries 13 to 23%; the question counts in Prepito's course are likewise heaviest in the Companies Law and the profession law. The map also leaves out the introduction to the study of laws (3 to 5%) and much of SOCPA's list: finance companies, security rights in movable assets, finance leases, cooperative insurance, banking control and foreign investment among the commercial laws, and anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism and terrorist financing, arbitration, social insurance, inheritance and wills, charitable fundraising and waqf among the laws related to the profession; plan from the full list in SOCPA's topics document.

The instruments, and what changed

Instrument	What to know
Companies Law, Royal Decree M/132 of 30 June 2022, in force from January 2023	Five forms: general partnership, limited partnership, joint stock company, simplified joint stock company and limited liability company. The simplified joint stock company is new and has no minimum capital; a joint stock company needs SAR 500,000 unless a regulator sets more. An LLC may have a single member. The Law also modernised shareholder agreements, classes of shares, convertible instruments and family charters, and its auditor articles fix the auditor's appointment, independence, access and liability.
Commercial Register Law and Trade Names Law, in force 3 April 2025	One national commercial register replacing city-level sub-registers, an annual electronic confirmation of data in place of renewal, suspension and then deletion for failure to confirm, and a five-year transition to April 2030 for existing sub-registrations. Trade names may now be in languages other than Arabic and are protected across the Kingdom.
Civil Transactions Law, 2023	The Kingdom's first codified civil law. Offer, acceptance, capacity, defects of consent, the effects and termination of contracts, and liability for harm. It sits under every commercial instrument on the paper, and it is where a candidate from a common law background learns that there is no doctrine of consideration.
Commercial Courts Law, 2020	Which disputes go to the commercial courts, the pre-trial procedures, time limits, and the enforcement of judgements. Examined for jurisdiction and deadlines.
Bankruptcy Law, 2018	The procedures a distressed debtor can enter: protective settlement, financial restructuring, liquidation, administrative liquidation, and simplified versions for small debtors. Examined for which procedure fits which debtor and who controls it.
Negotiable Instruments Law	Bills of exchange, promissory notes and cheques: the formal requirements of each, endorsement, presentment, protest and the consequences of a dishonoured cheque.
Labor Law, with amendments in force from 2025	Contract types, probation, working hours, leave, end-of-service benefits, termination and its compensation. The amendments changed notice periods and several leave entitlements; a candidate who learned the old figures will get them wrong.
Capital Market Law and CMA regulations	The Authority, the exchange, listing, disclosure, market conduct offences, and the CMA's register of auditors of listed entities.
Law of the Profession of Accounting and Auditing, 2021, amended 2025	Who may practise, the licence and its conditions, the register, the duty to apply SOCPA's standards, discipline, and the 2025 transfer of licence issuance from the Ministry of Commerce to SOCPA. Together with SOCPA's establishing instrument and its quality review programme, this is the part of the paper a Fellow is expected to know cold.

Three of those rows carry a warning. Decree numbers, article numbers and figures such as notice periods and leave days change with each amendment, and a figure that could not be verified against the official text is left out of this guide deliberately. Read the laws on the official gazette and the Ministry of Commerce's site, not a summary, and note the date of the version you read.

How the questions work

The Regulations paper is examined at a lower skill level than Audit or Financial Accounting: it asks what the law says far more often than it asks you to apply it to an ambiguous case. That makes it the most predictable paper in the Fellowship, and the one where the marks go to whoever memorised the most precisely. Four question types account for most of it.

Type	Example	How to prepare
Threshold or figure	The minimum capital of a joint stock company; the deadline to confirm commercial register data	A table of every number in the syllabus, learned by rote
Classification	Whether an act is commercial or civil; which company form a set of facts describes	The definitions, with the exceptions
Procedure	The steps to convert an LLC to a joint stock company; the order of a liquidation	Sequences, learned as lists
Consequence	What follows a dishonoured cheque; the liability of a partner who exceeds authority	Cause and effect pairs

Scenario questions do appear, most often on the Companies Law and the profession law, and they reward the same preparation: a candidate who knows what Article 20 of the Companies Law prohibits an auditor from doing will answer the scenario about the auditor who bought shares in the client.

Where nothing carries over, and where something does

Almost nothing on this paper is covered by the CPA, ACCA or CMA. REG's business law area gives a candidate the habit of reading a statute for its elements and exceptions, and its contract material is a useful contrast rather than a substitute, as UCC Article 2 vs Common Law Contracts shows. A candidate who has sat the Audit paper has met the profession law and the CMA's auditor register already, from the auditor's side; the SOCPA Audit study guide sets out that layer. A candidate who works in a Saudi finance function has met the commercial register, the Labor Law and the Companies Law in practice, and that experience is worth more here than on any other paper.

The language question matters more on Regulations than elsewhere. The laws are Arabic instruments, and the English translations are official but secondary. A candidate sitting in English should still read the Arabic text of the articles most likely to be examined, because the exam's English follows the Arabic.

A study plan

Eight weeks at ten to twelve hours is enough for a candidate who has never read a Saudi law, provided the weeks are spent on the texts and not on summaries of them.

Weeks	Focus	Why here
1	Financial transactions and principles of commercial law	The vocabulary everything else uses. Merchant, commercial act, register, trade name.
2 to 3	The Companies Law	The largest single instrument. Forms, capital, management, general assemblies, auditors, conversion, dissolution.
4	Commercial register, trade names, negotiable instruments, e-commerce	Figures and formalities. Build the numbers table.
5	Commercial courts and bankruptcy	Procedures and deadlines. Learn as sequences.
6	Labor Law, Capital Market Law, competition, anti-concealment, franchise, professional companies	Broad and shallow. One pass, then the numbers.
7	The profession law and SOCPA	Short and fully decidable. Secure every mark.
8	Timed practice and the numbers table	The paper rewards recall under time.

Two habits pay on this paper more than on any other. Keep a single table of every number, deadline and threshold in the syllabus, with the instrument and article beside each, and review it daily in the last two weeks. And date every note: a figure learned from a 2021 source is a figure to check.

When to sit Regulations

Regulations depends on nothing else in the Fellowship and nothing else depends on it, which makes it flexible. Candidates who work in Saudi Arabia often sit it first, because their daily exposure to the instruments makes it the cheapest pass and an early pass helps the schedule. Candidates outside the Kingdom usually leave it until they have read the laws, which takes longer than they expect. The full sequencing argument is in What Order to Sit the SOCPA Fellowship Exams In, and the shape of the whole qualification in the SOCPA Fellowship exam guide.

Where to practise this

Recall questions are exactly what a question bank is for. Prepito's Regulations course covers financial transactions, commercial law, the Saudi commercial regulations, the other commercial and professional regulations and the profession law with practice questions and full explanations in Arabic and English, and every explanation names the instrument the answer comes from. For the qualification as a whole, see the SOCPA Fellowship programme.

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This is a study guide, not legal advice or a substitute for the laws it describes. Sources: Companies Law, Royal Decree M/132, Saudi Press Agency, Ministry of Commerce announcement on the Commercial Register and Trade Names Laws, Ministry of Commerce, Capital Market Authority regulations, IFAC profile of Saudi Arabia on the profession's regulation. Laws and their implementing regulations are amended often, and SOCPA sets the syllabus, format and fees; confirm the current examinations guide on SOCPA's site, where the Arabic pages are the ones kept current.