The UK insurance company Aviva recently announced that it will cut 1,800 jobs worldwide in the upcoming three years. This major step will be taken in order to ensure the reduction of the costs. The plans for cutting so many employment positions worldwide is splitting the business into two.
Aviva is an insuring company with a UK origin but with offices in 16 countries. The company has a global workforce of 30,000 people, 16,000 of the employees working in the UK. The sites of Aviva are based in the cities of London, Norwich, York, Dorking, Bristol, Perth, Sheffield, Eastleigh, and Glasgow. According to the Unite union, the news of Aviva cutting so many employment positions worldwide are shocking. Unite’s officer for Aviva, Andy Case, further commented: “The scale of this role reduction will be met with disbelief across the company.”
The company also added that they intend to consult all its operations in each country over the job positions reduction. Aviva is trying to make a natural turnover and voluntary redundancies. The main aim is cutting costs by 300m British pounds a year by 2022.
Additionally, the company announced the split of its life and general insurance businesses in order to manage them separately in future. Maurice Tulloch, a chief executive at Aviva, commented that the insurer’s “complexity” had held back its performance for a long period of time.
“Today is the first step in our plan to make Aviva simpler, more competitive, and more commercial. We have strong foundations: excellent distribution, world-class insurance expertise, and our balance sheet is robust. But there are also clear opportunities to improve. Reducing Aviva’s costs is essential to remain competitive and this means tough decisions and job losses which I do not take lightly. We will do all we can to minimize redundancies and support our people through this.”