Santander Corporate & Commercial has appointed Andrew Whelan as managing director of regional real estate finance for the Santander Corporate and Commercial.

Whelan will be responsible for leading the real estate team to develop stronger relationships with new and existing customers within the real estate sector. He will be supported in this national role by Santander’s team of more than 320 regionally based relationship directors throughout the UK.

Whelan has more than 20 years’ experience in the Real Estate sector with a career spanning time working in Yorkshire, Scotland, London, the Midlands and Wales. He has a wealth of experience of the UK property market.

Santander Corporate & Commercial is one of the few banks that has grown its lending in the real estate sector for each of the past five years. It increased lending to businesses by 13% in the year to the end of December, with £4.1 billion of new facilities extended to SMEs.

Santander Commercial Real Estate last year continued to expand its book with new facilities written for new and existing customers in excess of £1.8bn, a 15% increase on 2012 and a net increase in the lending book of some £760m. Santander opened 16 new regional Corporate Business Centres over the year, bringing the total number of Corporate Business Centres throughout the UK to 50, and has grown its relationship banking teams to support this.

Whelan said: “I am delighted to have the opportunity to lead a great team of people to continue to build on our reputation in the sector and further expand on our ambitions in the real estate market which will assist our aspirations of being the SME bank of choice.”

Marcelino Castrillo, managing director of SME Banking at Santander, added: “With clear signs that conditions are improving, it’s important we continue to deepen our commitment to the real estate sector.

“We are one of the very few banks that has grown our real estate lending in the last five years and under Andrew’s leadership we plan to build on this further.”