Standard Life cuts 139 jobs in restructuring
STANDARD Life yesterday announced it was cutting 139 jobs as the company moves away from selling life insurance as part of a restructuring plan.
The majority of the cuts will hit the firm’s Edinburgh office in its IT, marketing and investment divisions, Standard Life said.
It blamed the move on forthcoming regulatory changes such as the retail distribution review and auto-enrolment into pension schemes, and said the restructuring would lead to more “streamlined and flexible” working.
“Our current model and structure has to change to meet the changing demands of this new world where customers will want to interact in different ways for different products,” Paul Matthews, the firm’s chief executive for UK and Europe, said.
The UK’s fifth-biggest insurer reported a seven per cent drop in sales last month, with business from corporate pension schemes dropping by a third.
The firm’s chief executive David Nish also revived talk of a plan to list its Indian joint venture HDFC Life, an idea it had floated as early as 2009. “I think we have a very valuable business there,” Nish told the FT, although he declined to give a timeframe for the listing.