140 jobs across the UK are under threat at an insurance company, just under half of which will be from its Ipswich office.

LV=General Insurance, which was formerly known as Liverpool Victoria, employs more than 3,000 people and is the UK’s third largest personal lines insurer.

The 140s under threat will affect the company’s claims teams across its offices in Leeds and Ipswich, as well as its headquarters in Bournemouth.

Ipswich is thought to be the company’s second biggest claims centre, handling the firm’s motor insurance business, dealing with customer and third party claims including vehicle accent repairs and write-offs, fire and theft, personal injury and property claims.

LV’s presence in Ipswich began with its acquisition in 2007 of the former Highway business, which at the time had around 90 people in the town.

LV employs 406 people from its offices at Crown House in Ipswich.

A statement released by the company said: “The motor insurance industry is changing fast and customer expectations are increasing.

“To make sure our customers stay at the heart of what we do and that we keep pace with our competitors, we need to adapt and improve our claims handling processes, so we’re proposing to make some changes. As a result of these proposals, we’ve had to make the difficult decision to put the people who work in certain teams at risk.

“These changes will affect around 140 people, less than 10% of the overall Claims team, but we will be offering the vast majority of those affected other opportunities in our business to keep unwanted redundancies to an absolute minimum.

“Our people in the Ipswich office represent less than half of those affected.

“These sorts of decisions are never easy to make and we’ll be doing everything we can to give our people all the support they need.”