Standard Life is cutting staff, but some insurers are hiring

It doesn't look like a great time to be working in the Scottish insurance sector. Hot on the heels of RBS's decision to cut over 400 roles at Direct Line, Standard Life has unveiled plans to make 600 redundancies, the majority of which will hit Edinburgh.

However, despite these gloomy headlines, it's not completely bleak north of the border.

Standard Life's decision to cut 600 roles is part of what it calls the second stage of its restructure to "increase our organisational capability, flexibility and capacity". Of these, 100 will be contractor roles, a further 100 positions will go through natural attrition and 24 vacancies will remain unfilled.

Around 480 roles will go in Edinburgh as the cuts hit its UK and international businesses and group corporate centre. We understand that those in sales and marketing, group IT and operations are particularly susceptible to the job cuts.

But Standard Life is also recruiting for 100 roles across its corporate, retail, investment management and Asian joint ventures divisions. A spokesperson also confirmed that technology will be key to the firm's transformation and roles are also likely to be created here over the next 18 months to two years.

Elsewhere, there are a few reasons for optimism. Lloyds Banking Group is hiring for operations and administrative roles within its insurance business, according to recruiters, while Aegon continues to offer compliance and actuarial roles despite the redundancies announced earlier this year.

"I imagine Lloyds will be rubbing their hands in anticipation after hearing the news of Standard Life's cuts as they both tend to recruit from the same, fairly shallow, talent pool," says one insurance recruiter in Scotland.

"We continue to see a lot of project work around the implementation of Solvency II, which means that compliance and finance staff are very much in demand," says Mike Stirton, associate director, financial services at Change Recruitment in Edinburgh. "Elsewhere, much of the recruitment has been very back office focused, so sales and marketing staff will find it tough to find a new position currently."

Standard Life will now enter a 90-day consultation period with its staff, will attempt to redeploy staff into other areas of the business wherever possible and will try to keep compulsory redundancies to a minimum.