Allianz Partners to cut up to 1,800 jobs as AI adoption speeds up

Allianz Partners said it would cut between 1,500 and 1,800 jobs across Europe as it sped up artificial intelligence adoption, turning a corporate efficiency push into one of the clearest examples yet of the employment cost of AI. Tomas Kunzmann, the company’s chief executive, said the reductions would be carried out over 12 to 18 months through severance agreements, early retirement offers and other voluntary arrangements rather than a sudden mass layoff.

The cuts land in a business that employs more than 22,000 people worldwide, making the reduction large enough to reshape operations but not to dominate the payroll. The pressure will fall most heavily on call-center and claims work: Reuters reporting said about 14,000 Allianz Partners employees handle customer inquiries and claims by phone, the part of the business most directly exposed to automation. That makes customer-service processing, first-line claims handling and related support functions the likeliest places for AI to remove routine tasks first.

Allianz said it had spent the past six months negotiating with works councils before moving ahead and had already extended voluntary leave offers in Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries. The company’s approach suggests a restructuring designed to avoid a headline-grabbing firing round while still shrinking headcount in the very functions AI is meant to replace. For workers, that means the bargain is becoming visible: efficiency gains are being paired with fewer service jobs, even at a company that says it is only rebalancing roles.

The move also fits a wider push inside Allianz. The insurer said in March that it had more than 900 AI use cases registered across the group, and it has highlighted internal tools including AllianzGPT and an Enterprise Knowledge Assistant for call-center agents and operational experts. Allianz and Anthropic announced a global partnership on January 9, 2026, to accelerate responsible AI adoption at Allianz, underscoring how quickly the company has moved from pilots to deployment.

Kunzmann, who has led Allianz Partners since July 1, 2022, was named for a future seat on the Allianz SE Board of Management effective January 1, 2027. Allianz Partners said it served more than 90 million customers globally and generated more than 10.5 billion euros in annual revenue in 2025, while Allianz’s record 2025 operating profit of 17.4 billion euros and proposed dividend of 17.10 euros per share gave the group room to push through a restructuring tied to automation.