Aviva cuts 700 more jobs at Norwich Union

Norwich Union announced a further 700 job losses in its UK life business yesterday, taking the total number of cuts across the Aviva group in the UK to more than 5,000 over the past 12 months.

Norwich Union announced a further 700 job losses in its UK life business yesterday, taking the total number of cuts across the Aviva group in the UK to more than 5,000 over the past 12 months.

Gary Withers, NU Life's chief executive, said the decision followed another strategic review of the business, which concluded further savings could be made by outsourcing the division's support service operations, such as software development and IT management.

The group said the jobs would be outsourced to a number of companies, both at home, and abroad to countries such as India. It said that while it would make every effort to find jobs elsewhere in the business for as many employees as possible, the majority of the 700 were likely to face compulsory redundancy. A further 250 contract worker positions are also set to be cut.

Mr Withers said: "Decisions that affect staff in this way are never easy to make. However, recent market conditions in the UK long-term savings market have been tough and we have to ensure that the company continues its drive for efficiency."

The job losses are the fourth round of cuts by Aviva in the last year, beginning last summer with 900 redundancies in its general insurance division. In November, it announced that 2,350 jobs were to be outsourced to Asia. In February, it revealed a further 1,200 job losses after its decision to close its insurance broking arm, Hill House Hammond.

Amicus, the UK's largest private sector union, said it wanted to open talks with the company as soon as possible, to try to keep compulsory redundancies to a minimum.

Elsewhere, Lloyds TSB also confirmed yesterday that its Newcastle call centre will close in November, with the loss of 960 UK jobs.