Zurich Australia is to slash at least 65 jobs under a restructure that mirrors global cuts at the troubled insurer, according to informed sources.

Underwriting, claims and shared services – which includes marketing as well as learning and development – will bear the brunt of local job losses, insuranceNEWS.com.au understands.

The employees “affected by the restructure” will finish up on December 11.

A Zurich spokesman refused to confirm or deny details of the planned redundancies.

It comes after Zurich Australia’s Acting CEO Rajbir Nanra recently flagged changes that “could lead to a number of redundancies in [the] general insurance business in Australia”.

“The potential job losses are part of a program to improve operational efficiency to support Zurich’s strategy and growth plans in Australia,” he said.

The claims and shared services job cuts appear to be the upshot of those “growth plans”.

insuranceNEWS.com.au’s request to interview Mr Nanra about the impending job losses and other cuts was declined.

The spokesman referred to a November 16 statement in which Mr Nanra said Zurich had managed people-related costs over the past six months by not replacing personnel when roles became vacant.

He insisted the drive for operational efficiencies would not prevent Zurich investing in improvements that lead to better services for brokers and customers.

“We have evolved our strategy to support, meet and exceed our broker and customer needs into the future,” he said.

Zurich is undertaking a group-wide “transformation” that now involves 1800 job cuts and aims to deliver annual cost savings of $US300 million ($410 million) by the end of next year and more than $US1 billion ($1.38 billion) by the end of 2018.

Zurich Australia’s life and investments business is not affected by the restructure.

The turmoil at Zurich has seen global CEO Martin Senn step down and the withdrawal from general insurance operations in the United Arab Emirates and life business in Singapore. See other story