Allianz to cut 1,800 jobs as AI automation takes over call center work in travel division

Allianz to cut up to 1,800 jobs as AI takes over call-centre work

The job AI seems most eager to take is the one on the other end of the phone. The job that AI seems keenest to take is the one on the other end of the phone. Allianz, the German insurance giant, is preparing to cut as many as 1,800 roles in its travel arm as automated systems take over work that used to need a person, according to Reuters. The figures are oddly precise for a plan nobody has formally announced. Somewhere between 1,500 and 1,800 jobs will go at Allianz Partners over the next 12 to 18 months, most of them in call centres. That division was always going to feel this first. Of its roughly 22,600 staff, about 14,000 spend their days fielding customer questions and settling claims by phone, which happens to be exactly what conversational AI was built to do. The work suits the machine almost too well. A traveller stranded by a cancelled flight or chasing a lost bag is asking a fairly predictable set of questions, and a system that can read, sort and answer them never needs a lunch break. The cuts do not stop at one border. Reports put them at up to 8% of the division, falling on workers in Germany, France and elsewhere across Europe. Allianz itself has said almost nothing. It declined to comment specifically on the reductions, the familiar corporate quiet that settles in when a workforce plan leaks before its official reveal. What makes the move worth pausing on is where it is happening. For two years the sharpest AI cuts were a tech-industry story, and here is a mainstream European insurer reaching for the same playbook in its back office. The tech firms drew the map first. Oracle recently shed 21,000 jobs in a year when its own regulatory filing tied the reductions to AI, and it has had plenty of company. Smaller software names have gone the same way, with Atlassian cutting 1,600 roles as it redirects money into AI. The headcounts differ, but the direction does not. The talking points have shifted alongside the numbers. Executives who spent years promising that AI would help workers rather than replace them have started saying the quiet part out loud. Call-centre work sits right in the blast radius. It is high in volume, tightly scripted and easy to measure, the sort of task software handles most comfortably, and the arithmetic of replacing it is brutally simple. It is worth reading the framing with a little caution, though. Companies have every reason to credit AI for cuts that might owe as much to soft demand or ordinary belt-tightening, and from the outside the two are hard to prise apart. The timeline muddies things further. Plans of this shape at Allianz Partners first surfaced back in late 2025, which suggests a restructuring that has been brewing for months rather than a decision taken this week. The pattern no longer belongs to one industry. Meta has been cutting thousands of roles while it pours money into AI, and the logic now reaching a European insurer is much the same, even if the two businesses could hardly be less alike. Allianz is one of the largest insurers on the planet, which means a move this size in a single arm is not a footnote. What proves itself in travel cover rarely stays there once the savings turn up on a spreadsheet. Europe tends not to let cuts on this scale pass quietly. Strong works councils and labour law mean the reductions will be haggled over for months rather than imposed overnight, which softens the immediate blow without changing where it ends up. Whatever the true mix of causes, the effect on people is concrete. Thousands in steady service jobs are being told their work will not outlast the move to automated support, and the call centre is turning out to be the first clear casualty.

Allianz Plans to Cut Over 1,500 Jobs as AI Focus Increases | PYMNTS.com

The layoffs will target the German financial services company's assistance and travel arm Allianz Partners, the report said. The cuts, which the company expects to come in the forms of severance agreements, early retirements and similar options, will affect between 1,500 to 1,800 positions across Europe, Kunzmann said at an event in Munich, according to the report. "This could happen to any of us at some point," Kunzmann said of the cuts, per the report. "We treat these colleagues exactly as is appropriate -- fairly." Allianz Partners, which has more than 22,000 employees, previously warned that staffing levels could be affected by its AI projects and cited the technology as a factor in the cuts, the report said. The company announced in January that it planned to deploy AI throughout its insurance business around the world in collaboration with Anthropic, adding Anthropic's Claude models to Allianz's internal AI platform that is available to everyone within Allianz. Concerns about AI's impact on work are rising, as massive spending on the technology continues, the Bloomberg report said. Bloomberg found that 27% of workers in advanced economies will likely be "meaningfully" impacted by AI. However, the past few weeks have seen reports suggesting that the breadth of that impact might be overstated. Companies that once saw AI as a replacement for workers have begun rehiring amid investor worries about the viability of the AI boom. Among the companies reversing course is Ford, which has begun reemploying hundreds of engineers to handle quality issues that automated systems couldn't deal with. "Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it's only as good as the information you use to train it," Ford Vice President of Vehicle Hardware Engineering Charles Poon said. Meanwhile, executives who once warned that AI would lead to mass job losses are walking back those predictions. Now, attitudes among tech CEOs about AI's impact on employment are shifting. "We've been roughly right on technological predictions and pretty wrong on the social and economic implications," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said. For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.

Allianz Partners to Cut Up to 8% of Workforce in AI Push

Allianz said it is cutting up to 1,800 jobs in Europe as it pushes to include more artificial-intelligence tools in its insurance business. The German group said Allianz Partners, which offers health, life and travel insurance to businesses and consumers, is progressing on a plan that affects between 1,500 and 1,800 employees in Europe, including 80-100 in Germany. Allianz Partners employs more than 22,000 people globally. The move comes amid a drive to transform the company's business with AI, it said in a statement Wednesday. "AI is helping us redesign processes, improve service delivery, tailor our offerings to individuals and remain affordable," Allianz said. Call-center employees are "in scope" in the planned job cuts, the company said. "The goal is not to remove the human element from assistance, but to [have] AI working alongside our people so they can focus on the moments and tasks where they create the greatest value for our customers and our business." The insurer's U.K. arm last year said it was aiming to cut its workforce by 650 roles, around 11% of the total in the country, as it looked to become a more digital-led business.