The business last year increased this side of its operations, bolstering numbers so that it had a 225 strong Financial Planning team.

This growth in advisory staff in 2016 was announced less than two years after it was fined £12.4m for “widespread investment advice failings” by the FCA. It escaped a £17m fine for settling early in March 2014.

Today, in a quarterly report, Santander stated: “We are expanding our wealth management business by growing our private banking and Financial Planning advisory teams.”

It revealed last year that it would have one Financial Planner in every four branches as part of plans to build up a restricted investment advice arm.

At the beginning of 2015 it had recruited 50 Financial Planning managers and this had grown by the end of that year to 200.

These staff mainly work at larger branches and cater for clients with at least £50,000 to invest. They support customers with “a requirement for Financial Planning”, whether that is tax advice, structured products or other matters.

Meanwhile, Santander also released its latest financial results today. Profit after tax reduced slightly to £371 million from £378 million.

Nathan Bostock, chief executive, said: “I am pleased to announce a solid set of results for the first quarter of the year. Our performance was underpinned by operating income growth, cost discipline, and good credit quality that resulted in profit before tax of £525m; adjusting for Banking Reform costs and PPI provision charge, profit before tax was £582m, up 6%.”