Job losses loom as Aviva management shake-up continues

A handful of mid-managers are set to lose their jobs as Aviva continues to shake-up the business by stripping out management layers.

The restructuring is part of chairman John McFarlane’s plans to make £400m cost savings by 2014 and “delayer” the business.

The news comes hot on the heels of the departure of Mark Hynes, Aviva products and governance director, the first casualty of McFarlane’s shake-up.

An Aviva spokesman said: “Today we have announced the next phase of our strategy to simplify the Aviva business to transform the way we work.

“As we have shared previously as part of our regional trading strategy our aim is to ensure brokers benefit from a single underwriting point of contact and more efficient teams.

“At the same time we need to streamline our back-end processes to drive a simple and efficient business. Changes announced today very much focus on driving efficiency and simpler decision making through our back office areas.

“These changes have resulted in a small number of job losses at a middle management level.

“Making decisions that affect our staff is always really difficult but we believe these changes are necessary to be able to make quicker decisions in the interests of our brokers, partners and customers.”