Aviva revealed yesterday that the revamp of its UK general insurance business and the demise of its Norwich Union brand will cost another 1800 jobs over the next two years.

Aviva revealed yesterday that the revamp of its UK general insurance business and the demise of its Norwich Union brand will cost another 1800 jobs over the next two years.

The cuts represent around 25% of the 7000 headcount in the operations arm of Norwich Union Insurance (NUI), which employs 18,000 of the total 30,000 Aviva workforce in the UK.

In September 2006 Aviva announced a £250m cost-cutting programme which saw 4000 jobs shed, with around 1000 offshored to India and 500 IT roles outsourced. The company later said half the jobs had gone through natural wastage.

Last October its new chief executive Andrew Moss promised to save another £350m a year on top of that, all but £50m in the UK, and £200m from general insurance.

Since 2006 the headcount in Scotland has shrunk from 3700 to 2900.

The company's decision to drop the Norwich Union brand and move to "Aviva" by 2010 was announced to shareholders at the com pany's annual general meeting last month. Yesterday it said the current exercise was UK-based and did not involve any further offshoring of jobs to India, where its operations are under strategic review.

In Scotland, where 2915 are employed on four sites, 590 jobs are to be axed in Glasgow and Dundee, two of 13 sites which will lose their NUI operations activities.

But Perth and Bishopbriggs will be recast as two of seven "centres of excellence", and stand to gain between 200 and 400 new jobs at each site, the company said, as many as possible of them relocated within Scotland. "Hopefully there might even be a net gain (within Scotland)," said spokesman Adrian Tink.

"The (seven) locations have not been chosen from a geographical viewpoint," he added. "Perth and Bishopbriggs are among the sites that are best equipped to meet our future business needs, in terms of the skills base, availability of staff, accom modation, and access to IT and infrastructure."

On Perth, the former General Accident headquarters which houses 1300, he commented: "We have a well-established building there, there is room for additional staff to go in there and they have a specific skill set."

Up to 350 of the 425 jobs currently at Dundee will migrate to Perth, with employees given travel subsidies as an incentive to relocate. Some 150 of those roles have already been relocated once, from Belfast and Norwich, within the past two years.

NUI currently has offices in 52 towns and cities in the UK, 22 of which will be affected by the changes.

At Dundee, the 75 surviving staff, who work in NUI's finance and sales divisions and in NU Life, will be relocated to a new smaller office over the next year or two, Tink said.

At Glasgow, where Aviva employs 570, the 240 roles in NUI operations will be shifted primarily to Bishopbriggs, which already has 570 of its 620 staff in NUI operations.

The site at Douglas House in Glasgow will be closed, with all staff centred on the office in West Regent Street.

NUI operations cover customer services, back office administration, and broker and business partner servicing.

Perth will become the hub for the sales and servicing of household and business policies, with Bishopbriggs handling personal lines and commercial liability claims.

Tink said: "NUI operations has grown to 22 sites, and become a bit disparate and complex, with too many products, processes and locations. Our customer service is very good, but we are trying to minimise the amount of times people have to come back to us by having a focus on excellence in certain elements."

The company stressed: "Insurance continues to change with a significant increase in purchases online. NUI has to adapt to this and provide customers and partners with a choice of how they interact with the business including phone, web and text."

RAC Rescue Operations are not affected, and NUI will also continue to maintain its broker trading presence in 40 UK sites, "keeping underwriters close to their brokers".

Igal Mayer, chief executive of Norwich Union Insurance, said: "We are a very strong business that has grown into a complex organisation. We want to deliver excellent, consistent and reliable customer service with market-leading efficiency.

"To achieve this we will need to simplify our business, consolidating our expertise into seven insurance centres of the future in the UK."