More IT staff to go at Legal & General

Despite achieving positive financial results, Legal & General will restructure its support functions

Insurance group Legal & General (L&G) will make up to 450 roles redundant following a review of its support functions aimed at cutting costs - and IT workers will be among those affected, Computing has learned.

In an email sent to staff, L&G said there is a need to ensure the right mix of support functions is in place to meet the business requirements.

“The support function review will develop and implement an appropriate organisational structure to meet the challenges we face as a business,” it said.

The firm has started a consultation process with workers union Unite and its management consultative forum to define the new structure. Exact numbers of redundancies at the various support functions will be known by April.

L&G said that the cull will also affect roles filled by contract and temporary staff.

At the same time, a separate consultation process at Tata Consultancy Services, also ending in April, will decide the future of up to 140 former L&G IT staff transferred to the outsourcer under a Tupe agreement in June 2008.

“The difficult and uncertain economic conditions are forcing companies to review their cost and overall effectiveness and Legal & General is no exception,” the company said.

“We recently achieved positive new business results for the fourth quarter of 2008. However, the challenges that have faced us in 2008 will continue throughout 2009.”