Tilney Bestinvest, the newly-merged wealth management and investment business, plans to expand its 50 staff in Scotland and open new offices.

The group is also on the hunt for acquisitions, Glasgow managing director and main board member Paul Frame has said.

The merger in August saw regional wealth manager Tilney bought from Deutsche Bank by private equity group Permira and merged with the platform business Bestinvest which Permira bought earlier this year. The group now employs 400 in offices with £9.2billion under management, offering investment management, financial planning, and advisory services for private clients and charities alongside one of the UK's leading direct-to-consumer online investment platforms.

Mr Frame said that after a protracted merger process, the business was now on the front foot. "We have plans to open additional offices in Scotland, and we are making inquiries about the possibilities of Aberdeen and Inverness.

"That is the key to expansion, we need to be more local to our customer base,"

Tilney Bestinvest has a £1.5 billion asset target for each of five regional hubs, which include Glasgow and Edinburgh, and currently manages over £1.6bn for around 5000 clients in Scotland.

The Glasgow office runs two UK-wide divisions, the portfolio lending service, still using Deutsche Bank's balance sheet as the group has no banking licence, and the charities division headed by Mr Frame.

The group has partnered with Eiris, the ethical investment research group, to help clients avoid the reputational risk highlighted this year by the Church of England's inadvertent investment in Wonga.

"Charities are now coming out with ethical statements," Mr Frame said. "If you don't have the tools to be able to manage money on that basis, that is going to be embarrassing further down the line."

He admitted the tool had not previously been available within Tilney's charities business.

The new division is also partnering with ARC to offer risk and volatility monitoring of charities' portfolios. "Third party verification will be far more common, " Mr Frame said.

The industry's standard performance benchmarks took no account of how much risk or volatility had been taken to achieve a return, and charities would have to recognise they needed more than "the 15-minute slot at their meeting to talk about investments". He warned that many portfolios might have an over-exposure to bonds as interest rates began to rise, adding: "Trustees will have to ask far more about what is the right solution."

Mr Frame said charities expected charges to be low but added: "One of the main reasons for looking after certain charities for a private wealth business is getting exposure to those trustees and the networks they are involved in."