Norwich Union to offshore nearly 1,000 jobs

The UK's largest insurance firm Norwich Union is expanding its offshoring plans by moving almost 1,000 jobs to India and Sri Lanka over the next year.

The move will lead to the loss of 150 jobs but Norwich Union's parent company Aviva said most job reductions will be achieved through normal staff turnover, redeployment and training.

The locations affected by the offshoring are Norwich, where 70 jobs will be lost, and York, where 60 jobs will be lost, with the remaining 20 across other Norwich Union locations.

In total 950 jobs will be offshored with 760 back-office administration roles for the life and pensions and general insurance business going to India and 190 finance support jobs going to Sri Lanka.

Gary Withers, Norwich Union's CEO, said in a statement that the move is vital for the company to remain competitive. "The experience of our existing offshore operations shows that the service levels in India continue to match those that we achieve in our UK operations. Expanding our offshore operations will give us the increased capacity we need."

Aviva already has over 3,700 staff in India and said it expects to have moved 7,000 jobs offshore by 2007.

The latest news has infuriated the union Amicus, which says the move proves Norwich Union intends to reduce its total UK workforce by a quarter by 2007.

David Fleming, national officer at Amicus, said in a statement: "This points to a bleak future for the UK financial services finance industry as a whole. We will not accept compulsory redundancies as a consequence of offshoring in any company and that will be fundamental to our negotiations with Norwich Union."

An Amicus survey earlier this month revealed that 99.9 per cent of staff at Norwich Union feared further job cuts under the company's offshoring programme, while 78 per cent have job security worries.