Nish, a former Scottish Power executive who joined Standard Life three years ago, will take over from Sandy Crombie in the new year. Crombie, a Standard Life veteran, will stay on in a consulting role until the spring.

The firm said on Monday that it began to look for a replacement for Crombie in April, interviewing "several" internal and external candidates from both Britain and abroad, though the decision to appoint Nish was unanimous.

Nish has been expected to take over the top job at the insurer since his appointment in 2006, with the departure last year of Standard Life's well-regarded head of its retail business, Trevor Matthews, cementing his position.

"David has a proven track record in our business, and has played a pivotal role in the delivery of our strategy since he joined the company," said Standard Life chairman Gerry Grimstone.

Analysts said the move was not a surprise and was not expected to spell change for the insurer, though it did finally remove some lingering uncertainty over succession.

"This is much as expected although the company have interviewed external candidates," analyst Marcus Barnard at Oriel Securities said. "This would imply a continuation of current strategy and should be seen as positive."

Shares in Standard Life were up 0.3 percent at 9:02 a.m. British time, trading at 230.7p, underperforming a 1.2 percent rise in the FTSE bluechip index.

Standard Life announced last March that they were searching for a successor to the knighted Crombie, now on the board of part-nationalised British bank RBS .

(Reporting by Clara Ferreira-Marques and Rosalba O'Brien; Editing by Myles Neligan)