In this work, we have studied theoretically the transmission and reflection of electromagnetic waves in the microwave frequency range through the in-plane magnetized exchange-coupled bi-layer ferromagnetic metallic films. It was found that responses of the films in transmission and reflection are very different. In transmission, the response of the fundamental mode dominates, but in reflection, the first exchange mode demonstrates the largest variation in amplitude with respect to the off-resonance regime. The theory also predicts an interesting regime of low-loss transmission associated with the resonance excitation of the first (anti-symmetric) exchange standing spin wave mode. In this regime, the transmission through the sample increases instead of decreasing for this mode. V C 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.