The past couple of years have paid off handsomely for Clive Cowdery. In 2004 Resolution Life Group, the company that he founded the previous year, bought the closed life business of Royal & SunAlliance, one of Britain’s biggest insurers, for £850 million. Yesterday Mr Cowdery completed a £3.6 billion deal that will propel Resolution, now a listed company, into the FTSE 100, leapfrogging R&SA and Friends Provident.

Resolution is not Mr Cowdery’s first start-up. Originally an insurance broker, in 1992 he co-founded Scottish Amicable International/J Rothschild International, a Dublin-based European insurance business. He went on to become chairman and chief executive of GE’s primary insurance operations in Europe, where he oversaw businesses in 12 countries.

After a series of acquisitions by Resolution, including a merger last year with Britannic, the UK insurer, that doubled the company’s size, Mr Cowdery is now sitting on a stake worth about £75 million.

But he has not forgotten the less fortunate. He established the Resolution Foundation, a charity that promotes better access to financial services and consumer advice for lower-paid workers, to which he donates his £400,000 salary every year. He plans to spend £5 million of his own money on the foundation. Yesterday’s deal with Abbey represents a new stage in his plan for insurance domination. It is the first time the company has bought an open life fund, but is unlikely to be the last, he says.