Insurer Royal & Sun Alliance to axe 1,550 jobs

Insurer Royal & Sun Alliance today announced plans to axe 1,000 jobs in the UK by June 2008.

The insurer, which has 10,000 staff in the UK and 600 in Ireland, said it is part of a wider plan to cut 1,550 staff.

Irish staff will be unaffected by the cuts.

The company said the job cuts would help deliver savings of £70m (€103m) in the next two years in the UK and £130m (€191m) across the group.

R&SA external communications manager Jon Sellors said: "We are laying out some growth plans for our global business and our UK business.

“We have set out some pretty ambitious growth targets and key to that is going to be reducing our expenses to make us easier for people to do business with.

“We will reduce our UK workforce by 1,000 roles by the end of June 2008. That is part of a wider group reduction programme of 1,550. It is too early to say where the jobs will be going and we will be working with our union partners to develop that.

“We expect over half to go through natural turnover and redeployment to minimise redundancies.”

A spokesman for the union Amicus said: "Amicus is disappointed at the numbers involved in this redundancy programme and we will be working closely with the company to try and reduce the number of redundancies.

“We will also be pushing the company to achieve the cuts through natural wastage and voluntary redundancy without resorting to making compulsory redundancies.”

R&SA provides general insurance products to more than 20 million customers in 130 countries.

It has 24 offices in the UK, including Liverpool, where it employs 1,500 staff, Halifax, where it has just more than 900, and at its headquarters in Horsham, West Sussex, where 1,000 employees are based. A further 1,000 of its staff work from home.

Last month, R&SA posted better-than-expected first-quarter figures after a strong performance in the UK. The group said operating profits rose to £207 million, a gain of 29% on a year earlier and higher than the £200m (€293m) forecast by market analysts.

Shares in R&SA lifted more than 3% today.