Norwich Union Life's decision to cut 700 jobs was prompted by tough market conditions and a strategy of reducing costs, said director of strategy David Taylor.
But he said the insurer would maintain 700 staff in its IT and business services division “for the foreseeable future”. The division currently has 1,400 staff, plus additional contractors.
A spokesman for trade union Amicus said Taylor's guarantee was not satisfactory.
“It's nice to have a guarantee that there will continue to be jobs there, but at the end of the day they're still cutting staff numbers.
“It's half their IT and business services division that they're laying off.”
Taylor said the restructuring of Norwich Union's Life operations was prompted by the desire to focus on maintaining the company's position in the UK for the benefit of shareholders and policyholders.
“It's a competitive market place with hard market conditions, so we need to take tough decisions to maintain our position,” said Taylor.
The insurer's Life department will now focus on operations in its York and Norwich centres, he said.
The financial benefits of the move would start to be seen in the second half of the financial year.
Taylor said the IT and business services division was picked for the cull because it was one are which could comparatively easily be outsourced while preserving service levels.
Norwich Union Life and Amicus will now begin a 90-day consultation on the redundancies.
Amicus said it hoped Norwich Union would reconsider the number of jobs it planned to cut.
The union said it also wanted to see the insurer's business strategy behind the move, how it planned to maintain customer service levels with a reduced number of staff, and where outsourced contracts would be going to.
