(Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., the insurer that’s been under pressure from activist investors, said it plans to cut 242 jobs at five locations in New York City.

The reductions will take place through Sept. 30, and include its Water Street headquarters, as well as Pine Street, Old Slip, 1 New York Plaza and Liberty Street offices, AIG said in a so-called WARN notice dated March 21 and filed with the New York Department of Labor.

“In order to become our clients’ most valued insurer, AIG plans to reduce expenses by $1.6 billion through 2017,” Jon Diat, a spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement Tuesday. “As we take action to meet our expense target, staff reductions will occur.”

Chief Executive Officer Peter Hancock, facing demands from activist investor Carl Icahn to shrink the company and improve profitability, has been reducing costs by eliminating jobs and shifting thousands of positions to less expensive locations outside of New York. He told investors in November that he planned to dismiss almost a quarter of the top 1,400 members of senior management, and told staff not to count on lifetime employment. He said about 2,000 jobs annually were being moved to low-cost centers.

Moving jobs has been a “very substantial shift in the way the company has provided services to create scale,” Hancock said in a November conference call. AIG has “improved controls and provides the platform for future automation of what were very manual processes that were decentralized and had a lot of redundancy,” he said.

AIG shares have fallen 13% this year, compared with the 0.3% advance of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

Check us out on Facebook and give us a Like!

Copyright 2018 Bloomberg. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Want to continue reading?
Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader

Your access to unlimited PropertyCasualty360 content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking insurance news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Weekly Insurance Speak podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the employee benefits and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, BenefitsPRO and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.