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Insurer to lay off 22 staff

Thursday, 15 October 2009

Insurance firm Zurich has confirmed that 22 employees in its Belfast office will lose their jobs at the end of the month.

The company said that those being made redundant were supporting its small and medium sized enterprise (SME) insurance package business, which will be moved to the insurer's Cardiff office.

Only 12% of the business they handled was actually based in Northern Ireland and the rest came from other parts of the UK, a spokeswoman said.

Zurich has had a presence in the province for more than 30 years and stressed that it does not plan to close its Belfast office, which will continue to employ around 50 members of staff.

"Zurich trades a huge amount of broker business in Northern Ireland and we are fully committed to staying in Belfast. We've moved SME Package business to our Cardiff office because they have an operational set-up which will allow us to handle this business faster," the spokeswoman said.

The affected staff were placed on redundancy notice in July.