The Personal Finance Society (PFS) has made changes to the the application and renewal process for corporate Chartered status.

In May the Personal Finance Society, which is part of the Chartered Insurance Institute, revealed it was relaunching its Corporate Chartered proposition for the insurance and Financial Planning profession.

The body says the changes will make application and renewal easier.

The new criteria for achieving corporate Chartered status for Financial Planners requires 50% of advisers to be Chartered from January 2020.

Under the current rules only 25% of advisers must have achieved Chartered status.

From 1 July anyone applying for, or wishing to renew, their corporate Chartered status will be able to do so using a new application form.

Unlike with the previous application and renewal process, the new form will automatically calculate whether a business meets the criteria for staff.

For example, if more Chartered advisers are required, the form will highlight this.

The new application form also asks whether the applicant is seeking Chartered status for a division or the entire company and what the business is doing to give back to the profession.

The PFS says the question has been introduced in order to allow firms to “demonstrate how they contribute to building public trust and promoting professional standards”.

Steve Jenkins, development director of the CII, said: “By providing prompts and removing the need for manual calculations, the new application form should speed up the process for achieving and renewing corporate Chartered status.”