Standard Life saw little dealmaking action in its first eight years as a public company but that all changed two years ago, and the man leading the charge is Steve Murray.

After piloting the group’s big strategic deals to buy fund manager Ignis then exit from Canada in 2014, the 38-year-old was installed last year as chief executive of its new national advice business 1825, and has now pulled off four acquisitions including three in the past two months.

Created to exploit the gap in the market for financial advice, and helped further by last year’s arrival of new pension freedoms, 1825 is named after Standard’s founding date. Mr Murray says that in keeping with the group’s culture, the key goals are to train up advisers in the 1825 Academy, and to acquire firms across the UK which will put clients first rather than sales of Standard Life products.

The initiative is increasingly being seen in the industry as a smart response to a changing regulatory landscape, with the boundary between ‘independent’ advice and that ‘restricted’ to the products of one supplier becoming less critical than in the past, with only a handful of the top 20 advisory firms now offering whole-of-market options.

Born and university-educated in Edinburgh but schooled in Newcastle, Mr Murray jumped at the chance to return to Edinburgh 11 years ago after a high-powered early career at EY.

“I joined thinking I would here for about 12 months, it was an opportunity to be in Edinburgh and decide what to do,” he admits. But the following year David Nish arrived as finance director, prior to taking the top job in 2009, and quickly spotted Mr Murray, who says: “He was a terrific sponsor for me.” He goes on: “Working at EY I had been in places like Bradford & Bingley, Northern Rock, but Standard Life was different, it felt like people genuinely wanted to do the right thing, there was something within the DNA, and it struck a chord with me.”

He says of Standard’s growth path under Mr Nish and successor Keith Skeoch: “There was an awful lot of potential, David and now Keith have upped the metabolic rate.”

After heading up the corporate finance team, Mr Murray was appointed group strategy and corporate finance director in 2011 with some responsibility for the group’s joint ventures in India and China. In late 2014 after sealing the admired deal to sell Standard’s historic Canadian business, he became managing director of advice and strategy, and 14 months ago 1825 was born.

He says. “I was lucky enough that at the same time as Canada, we were looking at some of the changes in the UK market. We had seen such a huge demand for advice, not just from our own customer base but from the financial adviser firms that we partner with who were saying they were struggling with capacity.”

The most recent acquisition, Baigrie Davies which will now form 1825’s London office, had been an early adopter of the Standard Life wrap platform hatched more than a decade ago and now the market leader, with assets jumping by 22 per cent to £25.5bn last year on record net inflows of £4.4bn.

“We are incredibly fortunate being able to put in foundations for this business based on a market-leading proposition, we believe the platform is tremendously powerful and used by a large part of the market,” the chief executive says. “We are also fortunate in having a strong relationship with a world-class asset manager in Standard Life Investments.”

He adds: “Baigrie was one of the earliest companies we started speaking to about this space, we have always tended to operate in this way, having conversations with people you trust and work with,” The feedback was that building a parallel academy was a valuable attempt to help invigorate an industry fast losing its older IFAs and not attracting new ones.

“We are going to recruit people and build our own talent as well,” Mr Murray says. “The 1825 Academy will be a big part of what we do, we have five people going through our traineeship and by the end of the year we will have 20.” Munro Partnership, now 1825’s Scottish arm with offices in Ayr, Hamilton and Glasgow, will help train some recruits.

On completion of the three recent deals, and including its in-house team, Standard Life will have 70 financial planners advising 9,400 clients on £3bn of their assets. The chief executive hints that the desired ‘national footprint’ may be six to eight firms and 150 planners.

A large proportion of those with assets are unwilling to pay for advice. The industry is currently moving towards offering simplified online guidance, like the government’s Pension Wise, and 1825 won’t be Standard Life’s only response to the challenge of providing financial advice, Mr Murray says.

“Utilising face to face combined with technology could allow you to broaden the footprint quite substantially....We are hoping the Financial Advice Market Review will give firms the option to provide different sorts of advice with less risk of regulatory intervention.”

The high-flier says he is not looking too far ahead. “My role is to help the guys supporting clients, establish a team that can lead this business for the long-term, and I am having fun doing it.”