No 2 British insurer Royal & SunAlliance (R&SA) is cutting 1550 jobs, including 1000 in the UK, in a bid to save an extra £130 million ($221.9 million) in annualised expenses in the next two years.

R&SA – a former major player in the Australian market before selling its local business into what became Promina – says that largely because of the job cuts it’s now ahead of schedule to achieve its target of a yearly expense saving of £270 million ($460.9 million) by the end of this year.

CEO Andy Haste said in a statement the decision to slash jobs is “always a difficult one but necessary to ensure we remain as competitive as possible and to continue to deliver on our objective of sustainable profitable performance”.

Putting a positive spin on the decision, he said the restructure of the group over the past three years has allowed the group to build an “excellent platform for growth with exciting opportunities”.

“We have developed a strong track record of delivery and we will be pursuing these new opportunities with the same drive, energy and ambition as we have applied to the restructuring of the business.”

Another of R&SA’s goals is to be insurance brokers’ No 1 choice of insurer by 2010.

The company will undertake growth plans across its core businesses and continue to look for bolt-on acquisitions to drive its profitability.