Infinity to Consolidate Units in Alabama; 500 New Jobs Possible

Birmingham headquartered Infinity Property and Casualty Corp. announced the latest phase of its growth plan, which promises to benefit Alabama’s economy and create new jobs. Assisted by incentive packages from the city of Birmingham, Jefferson County and the state of Alabama, the national personal auto insurance provider will consolidate several operating units from around the country and locate them in Birmingham.

“Infinity’s consolidation into the Birmingham area is a further indicator of Alabama’s growing economic strength,” said Neal Wade, director of the Alabama Development Office. “This is a major economic development win for the whole state.”

The company’s new national operations center will include a 250 person call center to be located within an 112,000-square-foot Liberty Park office building. This operations center is projected to house a total of 600 employees by the summer of 2007, bringing the total number of Birmingham-based jobs to 1,100, out of Infinity’s 2,100 nationwide workforce. There are a potential 500 new job opportunities which will be created in the Birmingham location with the consolidation.

“We have a vested interest in supporting Alabama because this is our home,” said Jim Gober, chief executive officer of Infinity Insurance. “Not so long ago, we maintained major centers of operations in no less than four cities across the country. But in today’s challenging and competitive business environment, prudent expense management and optimizing human and capital resources must be considered key to any successful strategy, especially given our earnings and growth goals. The timing was right to ‘bring under one roof’ several of our service and support units. This move simply makes sense for Infinity and will be a great opportunity for our city.”

This past summer, Infinity began planning for the consolidation of its central operations into one location. The company’s call centers today handle nearly three million calls annually in an ongoing effort to provide quality service to its more than 15,000 agents and 700,000 policyholders. Infinity executives were impressed by the Liberty Park facility, which is located within five miles of the company’s corporate headquarters at 3700 Colonnade Parkway.

Source: Business Wire