RBS’s insurance arm to close Spinningfields office

ROYAL Bank of Scotland is to close an office at Hardman Boulevard in Manchester that employs 60 staff.

The move is part of a nationwide series of closures planned by RBS for its various insurance businesses which will lead to 14 of its 36 sites closing and around 2,000 redundancies.

The closures come as part of a plan to sell its insurance businesses, which was a condition of the bail-out plan agreed with RBS to ensure it didn’t flout EU state aid rules. The bail-out led to the bank effectively being nationalised, with the government taking an 83% stake in the company.

A spokesman for the firm confirmed that the Hardman Boulevard office, which is branded as NIG Insurance, would close by the third quarter of next year and said it was “too early in the process to provide specific details of potential job changes”.

However, it has been suggested that staff could be offered similar posts at the RBS-owned Direct Line insurance offices on nearby Quay Street.

“We announced our plans to transform the business in May 2010.  These plans included the re-evaluation of our UK office network in order to achieve greater cost-efficiencies as we head towards the divestment of RBS Insurance as mandated by the EU,” said the spokesman.

“We need to make better use of our office network and ensure that it has an appropriate scale of operations across the UK,” said the spokesman.

“The aim is to improve operational efficiency and enhance customer service, but it is clear that current property utilisation and sub-scale occupancy rates are not sustainable. 

“We will be working closely with our staff through employee representative bodies to finalise the details and will endeavour to mitigate the need for compulsory redundancies.”