RBS insurance cuts

ROYAL Bank of Scotland (RBS) has released details to staff of the job cuts it announced in May ( Insuranceday.com, May 11). It will close 14 of its 27 Direct Line and Churchill insurance centres and reduce the size of the others. RBS said it does not yet know how many of the roughly 2,000 job losses in the insurance sector would be forced redundancies. The RBS insurance business employs about 16,000 staff. Two centres in Glasgow will close, including the high-profile Atlantic Quay operation, where 640 staff work and some 400 will lose their jobs. Two more centres in Birmingham will go, plus two in Croydon and two in Bristol. Sites in Farnham, Ipswich, Manchester, Peterborough, Romford and Cardiff will be closed over a three-year period. Under the European Commission deal that allowed a UK government bailout of the group, RBS has until 2013 to sell its insurance arm and the job cuts are seen as a preparation for this. Previously, it had been unable to achieve the price it wanted for the insurance operations.