ING Groep NV, the biggest Dutch financial services company, plans to cut about 300 jobs at its Japan life insurance unit as it stops selling variable annuities in the nation, according to two sources.
Dick Okhuijsen, chief executive officer of Tokyo-based ING Life Insurance Co., told managers last week that the exact number of job reductions and the size of redundancy payouts will be determined by about June 15, the sources said, declining to be identified as the matter is private.
ING Life will withdraw from variable annuity sales effective Aug. 1 and focus instead on insurance for corporate clients, said Naoko Takahashi, a Tokyo-based spokeswoman for the company. She declined to comment on job cuts. Okhuijsen was not available for comment.
The target for cutting jobs, which would reduce ING Life's workforce in Japan by about 30 percent, may be increased to 50 percent, the sources said. ING Life had 1,046 employees as of March 31, according to Takahashi.
ING reported a pretax loss of about ¥25.7 billion on its variable annuities business in Japan for the quarter ended March 31.