MONTREAL: Great-West Life, one of Canada’s largest insurance companies, announced 1,500 job cuts on Tuesday, citing increased competition in the sector.

The layoffs over two years represent 13 per cent of the company’s workforce in Canada.

“To ensure we remain competitive and drive future growth, we are reducing costs and becoming more efficient, while at the same time investing more in customer-focused innovations and service offerings,” Great-West Life chief executive Paul Mahon said in a statement.

The company said it needed to become more nimble “in a world where advances in technology and heightened competition are having an increasing influence on customer needs and expectations.”

Published in Dawn, April 26th, 2017