Swiss Life to cut up to 600 jobs by end-2028, half of them in Switzerland

Sept 1 (Reuters) - Insurer Swiss Life plans to cut up to 600 positions by the end of 2028 to improve efficiency, it said on Tuesday, after reporting a 3% rise in its half-year gross written premiums buoyed by its domestic business.

Around half of the job cuts will happen at the Swiss insurance business, with the other half coming from the asset management unit mainly abroad, Switzerland's largest life insurance provider and major real estate owner said.

"We want to sustainably expand our business beyond 2027. This entails strengthening our position and our efficiency – also by leveraging the advancing digitalisation – to enable us to quickly capture further market opportunities in a focused manner," CEO Matthias Aellig said in a statement.

Swiss Life also announced a new share buyback programme of 250 million Swiss francs ($309 million), in a move largely anticipated by the market after it ended the last programme in May.

The company said its half-year gross written premiums rose 3% from a year ago in local currencies to 12.3 billion francs, supported by 7% growth in the Swiss market.

More than half of its premiums, or the total payments collected from policyholders, came from its domestic market in the first six months of 2026.

Swiss Life's European peers Zurich Insurance and Axa also recorded higher premiums in the first half.

($1 = 0.8095 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by Tristan Veyet and Orest Dovhan in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)