Aviva is to increase its offshoring capacity by moving around 950 jobs to India and Sri Lanka next year.
This builds on the 3,700 jobs Aviva has already set up in India.
Aviva expects to conclude its offshoring plans by the end of 2007 and anticipates that it will have up to 7,000 roles offshore by then, servicing its existing UK businesses.
The company said it expected no more than 150 compulsory redundancies in 2005 as a result of offshoring. Aviva said previous experience had shown that most job reductions could be achieved through normal staff turnover, redeployment and
retraining.
"Around 760 of the jobs will be based in India and will service the life and pensions and general insurance businesses in mainly back-office administration jobs. We expect the remaining 190 roles will be predominantly finance support roles based in Sri Lanka.
"The company will do all it can to minimise compulsory redundancies by redeploying staff to alternative roles. The company invests £1m a year to provide career advice, retraining and support for staff affected by change."
The company anticipates that two main locations will be affected by compulsory redundancies, 70 in Norwich and 60 in York.
The remaining 20 compulsory redundancies will be across other Norwich Union locations.
Norwich Union Life chief executive Gary Withers said: “We operate in very competitive markets where customers continually seek better value for money and quality of service. 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.
“We recognise that this is a period of great uncertainty and will do everything we can to support staff during this time and ensure that they are kept fully informed throughout the process. We have a successful track
record of redeployment with offshoring and as a result we will minimise the impact of redundancies.”
