AROUND 110 financial advisers working for Co-operative Financial Services in Scotland are to lose their jobs in a shake-up that could also see the group sell several business to Royal London, owner of Edinburgh-based Scottish Life.

UK-wide, the Co-operative is axing the roles of 670 advisers who visit people’s homes to sell them financial products.

Another 82 Co-operative advisers who work in its branches are to be transferred to insurer AXA, which will provide financial advice services for the Co-operative Bank’s 90 branches. It already provides this for Britannia with which the Co-operative merged in 2009.

The Co-operative said it was responding to regulatory changes under the retail distribution review which will ban commission payments and force advisers to have higher qualifications.

Neville Richardson, chief executive of Co-operative Financial Services, said: “We understand that such news may be difficult for impacted colleagues and we have not reached this outcome lightly.

“However, we were faced with rising regulatory costs in a business which was increasingly becoming sub-scale. This move supports our strategy to focus our specific attention on our banking and general insurance areas, where we have a growing and strongly differentiated competitive position.”

Meanwhile, Scottish Life’s parent company Royal London has entered exclusive talks to buy the Co-operative’s insurance subsidiary, including its closed life book and its Manchester-based asset management arm. This would hand it another two million policyholders and £20 billion of funds under management.

A spokesman for Royal London, which employs 1,200 people in Scotland, said the move was unlikely to affect jobs north of the border.