TWENTY six Southampton jobs are to be axed as insurance giant Axa closes its offices in the city.

The French owned firm said the move to shut its broker support office in the city was "regrettable" and that redundancies were inevitable.

Nationally around 200 jobs will go in the efficiency drive, with posts cut at four other centres in the UK.

Some of the 26 staff at Southampton's Cumberland Place office, who only deal with insurance brokers and not the public, will be offered the chance to relocate to Axa offices in Reading.

Mark Cliff, distribution director at AXA Insurance said: "We have made great strides in growing our business but we must constantly manage our cost-base in the extremely competitive financial services marketplace in which we operate. We are investing in technology and process improvements but, unfortunately, we also have to reduce our staff numbers. We have worked in close partnership with Amicus and managers' forum representatives to minimise the number of redundancies."

A spokesman for the Amicus union said: "We are alarmed at the numbers of potential compulsory redundancies and have agreed with the company the implementation of a voluntary redundancy programme in the sites remaining open."

Axa owns Winchester's Denplan health insurance group, which employs more than 300 people, and worldwide has more than 110,300 staff generating revenues of almost £50 billion.