British life insurer Standard Life is to cut 139 jobs as part of a previously announced plan to merge its domestic business with that in the rest of Europe.

Standard Life, Britain’s fifth-biggest insurer, has been cutting costs and reorganising to prepare for regulatory changes in Britain that will ban commission payments to brokers and automatically enrol workers into company retirement schemes, boosting pension saving.

In August, the 187-year old insurer said it would bring its British, Irish and German businesses under one roof to counterbalance its newly created emerging markets unit, focusing on China, Hong Kong and India.

“Our current model and structure has to change to meet the changing demands of this new world where customers will want to interact in different ways for different products,” said Paul Matthews, head of Standard Life’s UK and Europe arm.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.