One of the biggest Swiss insurers, the Zurich Insurance Group, will be cutting 800 jobs by the end of 2015 in an attempt to save money.
An overhaul of the business will aim to make savings of $250 million per year. The 800 jobs that will be lost, 1.4% of the business’s total employees, will apparently remove layers of management between the heads of the company and the ground level customer outlets.
The announcement was made yesterday, and the chief executive, Martin Senn, said in a statement that “We continue to make significant progress towards our strategic goal to make Zurich a focused and more profitable business”.
The cuts will only affect the internal mechanisms of the company and should make no difference to the customers, and customer relations will not be affected.
As a result of the overhaul, Zurich promised to grow operating earnings by reducing the complexity of its management, but it has lowered its return on equity target for 2016 from 16 percent down to 12-14 percent.
High level management changes have already been made in the company since August when the Chief Financial Officer committed suicide, and George Quinn was instated in his place and Chairman Josef Ackerman resigned.
Senn added in regards to the employee cuts that “The changes are subject to discussions with employees and their representatives.”