Standard Life, the insurer, faced down calls for union recognition today after a lively protest by disgruntled staff outside its annual meeting of shareholders in Edinburgh.

When questioned by several of the 170-odd small shareholders who attended today’s meeting at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, Sandy Crombie, the chief executive, was forced to deny that he was anti-union.

The Standard Life chief entered the conference centre through a side entrance but a spokesman denied that this was in the light of a demonstration at the main entrance featuring about 20 staff holding placards and a man dressed as a black and white “fat cat”.

“My starting point is that staff have the perfect right to be represented,” he said. “We understand that some staff have a leaning towards membership of the union. What we are short of is evidence and data in support of that leaning,” he said.

Mr Crombie called on Amicus, the pensions union that is part of Unite, to provide evidence to support its claim that more than 1,000 of Standard Life’s roughly 10,000 UK staff had joined since changes were made to the pension fund.

He refused to sanction holding a secret ballot to establish support for membership.

Standard Life closed its final salary scheme to new members in 2004, but has agreed to make a one-off payment of £50 million plus six-monthly top-ups of £10 million to plug a £140 million shortfall over the next seven years.

It has just finished consulting staff over its plans to pay out pensions to staff based on average career earnings rather than final salary at retirement.

Mr Crombie also insisted that it was still possible in certain circumstances that some holders of endowment policies would be paid out in full, although he stressed Standard Life’s aim was not to unnecessarily boost customers’ expectations.

Sir Brian Stewart, Standard Life’s departing chairman, was previously to endure a volley of questions over the size of the shortfall faced by holders of mortgage endowment policies, mainly sold during the 1980s.

Standard Life admitted that the endowments shortfall was bigger than the £1.3 billion size of its fund of with-profits policies.

After 14 years as a director, the last four of them as chairman, Sir Brian today handed over to Gerry Grimstone, the former non-executive chairman of private equity group Candover Investments.

Standard Life demutualised and listed its shares on the London Stock Exchange last year. Since then profits have stormed ahead and its share price has increased by more than 50 per cent.

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