IT has been a long goodbye, but Fiona McBain is now in the final furlong of her departure from Scottish Friendly.

Ms McBain will step down as chief executive of the Glasgow-based, and Scotland’s last remaining, mutual at the end of the year, having signalled her intentions to the board last year.

By the time she clears her desk at Scottish Friendly House, she will have served the mutual for 18 years, the last 10 of which she has spent in the top job.

On paper it looks like the right time to go. At 56, she is young enough to take on new challenges, and lend the invaluable expertise she has amassed to other ventures.

Yet, while acknowledging there is a “natural symmetry” in bowing out after a decade at the top of the mutual, it will still be wrench to leave an organisation that has become like an extended family.

“It’s been a really emotional decision,” Ms McBain said this week. “It’s taken a while to sink in, to be honest, the reality of what I have chosen to do.

“[There are] mixed feelings, because it obviously generates a lot of reflection when you think back on what you have done and I’m really proud of all of that. There is quite a lot of emotion about leaving [but] I’m just starting to get more sparks of excitement of what comes next.”

Ms McBain, who will be replaced by long-standing deputy Jim Galbraith, is in no hurry to decide what to do next. As might be expected, there have been “flattering” offers already, but so far the only commitment she has made is an extended holiday in Australia in the New Year.

“Up until we went public, my focus was absolutely on ensuring a smooth transition,” said Ms McBain. “Now that’s public and it’s settled I’ve had some time to think about it. But I’m being consistent in saying I don’t need to rush into anything. I’m fortunate in that I have the luxury of choice, so I can take time.”

Equally, Ms McBain does not feel bound to stay in financial services, saying her 25 years in the sector have given her a broad base of experience.

“We’ve done seven acquisitions here, we have restructured the business, so I would like to think I have got quite a wide transferable skill set,” she said.

While there is no news to report on Ms McBain’s immediate future, there is no shortage of headlines in her Scottish Friendly highlights reel. There is now a greater awareness of Scottish Friendly at national and international level, she said, because of the transformation that has taken place since the launch of its strategy for growth. That has seen the mutual ink a series of major deals, including the acquisition of Scottish Legal in 2007, which led to Scottish Friendly growing by one-third overnight.

The acquisition of Marine & General Mutual last year was even bigger, which meant Scottish Friendly more than doubled in size. The deal went through in spite of some commentators believing it would not meet the regulators’ approval. “We proved them wrong,” she said.

“There was a lot of received wisdom saying a friendly society by definition could not be cost-efficient, because a friendly society has a niche product that has very small premiums. We have just turned that on its head.”

Away from acquisitions, Ms Bain has presided over a “whole of market wrap administration business from scratch”, observing that in this regard Scottish Friendly had succeeded where several major plcs had failed.

The mutual then proceeded to win the contract to administer Aviva’s wrap business. “We were able to migrate all of that on to our platform, and re-open it to new business in less than a year,” she said.

“We then sold that business for a significant multiple.”

What gives Ms Bain particular satisfaction from this sale was being able to retain the executives who had run the platform. That was achieved by continuing to grow the business in other ways, she said, including by launching a mini platform, My Plans.

That Scottish Friendly has formed working partnerships with an array of major players is also held up by Ms McBain as evidence of its success. One example is providing a JISA (junior individual savings account) for Standard Life, which Ms McBain said is down to Scottish Friendly’s cost efficiency and the speed with which it can access the market.

Such partnerships, alongside direct marketing and the My Plan e-commerce platform, are the three key distribution channels for the mutual.

Since Ms McBain became chief executive in 2006, Scottish Friendly has grown from having £600 million to £2.5 billion funds under management.

It now has 480,000 members and its 100 staff at head office in Blythswood Square, Glasgow, administers 1.2 million policies.

Ms McBain acknowledges this does not make Scottish Friendly a big office, but she relishes the fact the organisation “punches above its weight”. That Scottish Friendly is owned by its members means they are fundamentally “at the heart of what we do”. “We don’t have to manage the business with the spectre of the daily share price and quarterly results to the market,” Ms McBain added. “I think that’s really important. Scottish Friendly is one mutual that shows the real tangible economic benefits of that.”