NIG planning to offshore 30 jobs

Commercial insurer NIG is consulting with staff over plans to offshore 30 full-time jobs to India.

None of the at-risk jobs are broker-facing, and include functions such as indexing and data entry, the company said.

The consultation will last 45 days.

The 30 at-risk jobs are in the Direct Line Group-owned company’s Peterborough e-trading centre and  its underwriting centres in Manchester and Bristol.

NIG managing director Jon Greenwood said in a statement that the company had decided to consult on offshoring the roles to improve efficiency.

Direct Line Group is targeting a commercial combined operating ratio (COR) below 100% for 2014. Its 2013 COR was 106.8%.

NIG makes up the bulk of Direct Line Group’s commercial business.

Greenwood said: “These proposals are in line with our strategy to improve our service and deliver a competitive offering for our broker partners.

“We have recently invested heavily in technology to make us a more adaptable and agile business. In addition, we are already making systems improvements to our eTrade Centre in Peterborough, which will significantly reduce our referrals processes.

“This means that we are able to be more cost effective by offshoring some of our non-broker facing processes – with no impact to our brokers or customers.”

Greenwood added that NIG’s regional trading footprint would remain unchanged. He said: “We anticipate that these changes will enable our underwriters to focus on decision making and day-to-day trading.

“While we don’t take such decisions lightly, the commercial landscape has become more challenging and, like other commercial insurers, we need to respond to this to stay competitive, while delivering the best service to our broker partners.”