Sir Sandy Crombie is someone who is quite well known in Edinburgh. He had a long career with Standard Life, rising to Group Chief Executive. Knighted for his services to the insurance industry in 2009 when he retired from Standard Life he went on to work on the RBS board.
He stepped down from the RBS Group at the end of 2017 and now serves as Chairman of Amiqus Resolution, Edinburgh Alternative Finance (Lending Crowd) and Cameron Hume.
We met him to talk about his involvement with Cameron Hume which flags itself up as providing ‘fixed income investment management services to institutional clients’. This is a shorthand for a company which oversees the investment of other people’s money, but the difference is that they are a small Edinburgh-based investment management firm focussing on the importance of environmental, social and governance factors.
Sir Sandy began his career as an actuary and is now Chairman of the board at the young firm where he hopes that his experience can help. He explained that after 50 plus years in big board rooms he is happy to be involved with smaller companies. He said : “I wanted to be much more involved in business and the opportunity for that exists much more obviously in small early stage business like Cameron Hume. This is one of three that I am involved with.”
He explained a bit more about his past career : “I suppose that my best time at Standard Life I felt was the ten years I spent creating Standard Life Investments. I had a very rare opportunity which was to create something rather than just grow it. It was a rare privilege.”
Outside of business, it appears that Sir Sandy is often found in the kitchen creating a new gluten free cake for his family.
His own interests include arts, education and heritage. He is a board member of the Edinburgh Business School, the Ross Development Trust, and is President of the Cockburn Association. His previous roles included Chairman of Edinburgh World City of Literature Trust, Chairman of Creative Scotland and Vice Chairman of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Sandy is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and chairs the Society’s Audit Committee. He was off there for one of his regular meetings after our interview.
Listen to our full length interview on Anchor.fm
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