330 Aegon staff switch to Serco as part of £150m outsourcing deal

INSURANCE and pensions group Aegon will transfer 330 staff to outsourcing specialist Serco in a £150 million deal to administer its protection business for the next ten years.

Most of the affected employees are based at the group’s Lytham St Annes office. Of the 390 people who work for Aegon’s protection business, 60 will remain with the group to oversee proposition development, pricing, sales and actuarial functions.

Aegon’s general insurance customer service and administration support function is set to transfer to Serco’s recently-established business process outsourcing (BPO) unit in the fourth quarter of the year.

In May, FTSE 100 firm Serco won a 12-month deal to manage a call centre for general insurance provider Esure, owner of Shelia’s Wheels.

Serco pledged to make the Lytham office a “centre of excellence” that would handle BPO services for other customers.

Adrian Grace, chief executive of Aegon UK, said that he did not anticipate any redundancies under the arrangement. He said: “We are committed to providing excellent levels of customer service with cost-efficient operations and partnering with Serco will provide this for us.

“We remain committed to building our UK business focusing on our chosen markets of workplace savings and at-retirement, and our protection business is a core part.”

News of the deal came as Serco yesterday took over the running of the NorthLink ferries between the Scottish mainland, Orkney and Shetland on behalf of the Scottish Government.