Insurance firm Royal & Sun Alliance plans to axe 1,550 jobs by June 2008, including 1,000 in the UK.
The group said it hoped to limit the number of compulsory redundancies and estimates that half the jobs will go through staff turnover.
The cuts would help save £130m in the next two years, the insurer said.
“We have set some pretty ambitious growth targets and the key to that is going to be reducing our expenses,” said external communications manager Jon Sellors.
Sellors said the company would be talking with its unions.
Royal & Sun Alliance, which has 10,000 staff in the UK at sites in Sussex, Liverpool and Manchester, said it was too early to say which sites would be affected.
A spokesman for Amicus said the union was disappointed at the number of jobs being cut, but added that it would work with the firm to try and limit the number of compulsory redundancies.
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The insurer axed about 1,100 UK jobs in 2004 when it outsourced call centre work to India. And it recently changed tack on its pension schemes in a bid to reduce its pensions deficits.