Standard Life is facing demutualisation and plans to cut 1,000 jobs, it was revealed today. In a statement published this morning, Standard Life, the second largest life insurer in Europe, said today that its UK life and pensions business would be "repositioned to achieve profitable growth". In practice, this will require a "significant" reduction in costs of 20% and a loss of 1,000 jobs by the end of the year. Most of the job cuts, around 880, will be in Edinburgh and Standard Life said it could not rule out compulsory redundancies.