Scottish Widows is cutting around 130 jobs across the UK as part of restructuring of its pensions and investments business.

The company said it is introducing a new structure for dealing with intermediaries and clients in that area of the business.

Around 45 new roles will be created in Edinburgh and Bristol.

The cuts are among the 9,000 job losses which owner Lloyds Banking Group plans over the next three years, which were announced last month.

In a statement the company said: "Lloyds Banking Group is today announcing around 130 role reductions in its insurance business as part of the reductions recently announced in the Group's Strategic Update. These role reductions are part of our 2015 - 2017 plan.

"These roles, which are spread across the UK, are within Scottish Widows' pensions and investments business, which is introducing a new structure for dealing with intermediaries and clients.

"Around 45 new roles will be created in Edinburgh and Bristol, as part of the new structure.

"Lloyds Banking Group is committed to working through these changes with employees in a careful and sensitive way. All affected employees have been briefed by their line manager today. The Group's recognised unions Accord, Unite, and LTU were consulted prior to this announcement and will continue to be consulted."

The organisation said its policy is always to use natural turnover and to redeploy people wherever possible to retain their expertise and knowledge within the Group.

It said that where it is necessary for employees to leave the company, it will look to achieve this by offering voluntary redundancy with compulsory redundancies always a last resort.

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