Two offices to be closed n Home and motor products to be reduced

Staff at personal lines insurer Link and Zenith face an uncertain future after the company announced that it intends to close two of its six offices.

The insurer will consolidate both its Maidstone and West Malling offices under one roof as well as two offices in Haywards Heath.

The company said that all staff would be affected by the restructuring, which will be implemented by early 2007.

Steve Tidd, chief executive of Link and Zenith, said: "It is too early to say who will be affected in terms of individuals or teams. But, what I can say is that we are going to review the company's entire operations, and we will be restructuring and streamlining operations to better position our business to ride out the ups and downs of the UK insurance cycle."

The restructuring is part of a review programme of Link and Zenith's entire product range following the acquisition of Rubicon Insurance Solution's Maidstone operations.

Link and Zenith currently offers 21 different products to intermediaries with many targeted at similar markets.

Tidd said the intention was to merge some of those products, including motor and home, which would halve the insurer's offering while moving specialist products on to full cycle EDI.

"Now that our administrative operations are under the control of Zenith Services UK, we need to give greater focus to our product range," Tidd said.

"We are committed to providing quality products at competitive prices for our intermediaries.

"It is important that we review and re-engineer our current product range to create a highly competitive offering that not only meets the needs of our partners, but also provides strong returns," he added.