MORE than 100 Norwich Union Life jobs in York are in jeopardy.

The city's biggest private employer, Norwich Union, today announced dramatic cuts in its marketing and telesales operations.

These are the first major cuts since the merger in September, 2000, of Commercial Union and General Accident into Norwich Union.

Its life insurance business is based in York, where it employs 3,200 people.

Talks are taking place with everyone who could be affected by the restructuring, but the company will be offering other jobs within the company or, if necessary, redundancy packages.

Ninety of the 495 marketing jobs split between York, Norwich and Stevenage are to go.

The bulk of them are likely to be in York, given that the city - with 300 marketing staff - has the lion's share.

All 42 operators' jobs in York at Norwich Union Life's tele-business operations will vanish, along with 18 jobs in Sheffield, as the operations centralise at Norwich. Tele-staff numbers there will expand from 45 to 60.

The cuts come as results for parent company Aviva's wordwide life operations announced last week show that profits have dipped by eight per cent to £1.5 billion.

A spokesman for Norwich Union today blamed the marketing cuts largely on the uncertainty caused by the Government's review of the structure of the whole financial services marketplace.

"We want to develop a responsive, flexible and effective team so that when the Government provides that framework we will be fleet enough of foot to be ahead of others seeking new business," he said.

The tele-operator cuts, he said, are part of a cost-saving exercise and a need identified by IT experts to centralise all the telephone follow-ups to leads from marketing campaigns.

Not everyone would be made redundant, and talks were now taking place with individuals.

"We will offer redeployment and, in some cases. relocation opportunities. But it will be weeks, perhaps months before exact numbers of redundancies will be known," he said.

Updated: 15:08 Monday, March 03, 2003