Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The restructure was announced by Norwich Union’s parent firm, Aviva, who aims to reduce replication and improve efficiency for its UK business arm.

The Norfolk company, which currently employs 36,000 staff across the UK, said it would seek to minimise the number of compulsory redundancies through natural staff turnover and voluntary measures.

Throughout the restructure, up to 1,000 roles will be offshored to India – in line with previous announcements that 7,800 roles will be located offshore by the end of 2007 – and a further 500 roles being outsourced to third party IT suppliers.

Aviva said the savings and costs will be evenly spread between the life and general Insurance businesses and in the life business to deliver annual cost savings of £250m in 2008 at a cost of £250m by the end of 2007, representing approximately 10 per cent of its current operating cost base on continuing operations.

Patrick Snowball, Norwich Union executive chairman, said: “We have to ensure that Norwich Union remains a highly efficient and effective company in what is an increasingly competitive and dynamic environment.

“The integration and efficiency measures we are announcing today are part of a programme which will result in an increase in customer focus across our UK businesses along with better and more efficient use of technology.”

It is anticipated that approximately £200m of these savings will be reported in the 2007 income statement with the full £250 million being reported to profits in 2008.