The company’s plans were outlined 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.
It revealed that it will have one Financial Planner in every four branches by the end of Q1 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 last year to 200.
These staff will mainly be working at larger branches and will cater for clients with at least £50,000 to invest.
They will be there to support customers with “a requirement for Financial Planning”, whether that is tax advice, structured products or other matters.
The bank is also going to offer an investment planning platform. There will be over 2,000 funds on a self-select fund supermarket style basis which clients can access themselves.
Alan Mathewson, managing director at the wealth management and private banking division, said: "Online investing is likely to represent 25 per cent of the UK investments market over the next couple of years and as a scale challenger, we want to be at the forefront of this trend, providing a simple and convenient way for our customers to access the investment market."
Santander spokesman Andy Smith said the bank was “looking at how to integrate the propositions (Financial Planning and platform).”
He added the bank is looking at robo-advice too, saying it was something “we might be able to add further down the line”.
The FCA fined the bank in March 2014 having found ‘failings’ which “took place despite repeated communications and warnings about suitability of advice to the industry by the FSA”.
When the FSA first put its concerns to Santander UK in late 2012, the firm immediately decided to stop giving financial advice in branches to prevent further problems occurring, the FCA said previously.