Debasish Panda, chairman, IRDAI
`Yes, he has assumed the charge of the chairman of IRDA in New Delhi today. In his initial wish-list for the IRDA employees, he has preferred digital, quick decision making and quick renewals of licenses,” confirmed IRDA sources
New Delhi:
Retired IAS officer, Debasish Panda, 60, former secretary Department of Financial Services(DFS), Ministry of Finance, has taken over as the chairman of insurance regulatory body Irda on Monday in New Delhi.
The post of chairman has been lying vacant after Subhash C Khuntia, had retired on May 7, 2021.
“Yes, he has assumed the charge of the chairman in New Delhi today. In his initial wish-list he has conveyed to the IRDA employees that he would prefer digital , quick decision making and quick renewals of licenses,” confirmed IRDA sources.
Panda is expected to focus on ease of doing business and involvement of more professionals and experts in the functioning of the Irda, said industry observers.
The government on last Friday had appointed Panda as the chairman of IRDAI for three years.
Panda is a 1987-batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh(UP) cadre and has earlier served the MoF in different capacities including additional secretary, looking after Insurance and Financial Inclusion), secretary, DFS, for almost last four years before his retirement.
He was also in the board of IRDAI as a government nominee till a few months back was also in the board of Reserve Bank of India(RBI).
The insurance industry had welcomed the decision to appoint Panda as the chairman of the IRDA as he has a through exposure to all segments of domestic financial sectors and has handled some key departments in government of India and UP state government.
A lot of policy measures are pending as the there was no regular chairman in the IRDAI for the last nine months and Panda will have to first attend to them, said industry observers.
Besides, though from the IRDAI side, guidelines for launching Surety Bonds are already in place, the general insurers including public sector companies are not in a position to unveil their products by Apr 1 as there are a lot of technical hitches are still there to be sorted out.
As the government is very keen that the general insurers support infrastructure projects with Surety Bonds, Panda will have to ensure that the products are atleast launched by a few insurers soon.
Apart from a few issues as part his immediate agenda, Panda will have other agenda like increasing insurance penetration in the country, launching Risk Based Capital(RBC) regime and IFRS accounting system, furthering financial inclusion as medium term agenda in his three year tenure.
IRDAI is a 10-member regulatory body consisting of a chairman, five whole-time members and four part-time members.
The regulatory is entrusted with the task of protecting the interest of insurance policyholders and bringing about speedy and orderly growth of the insurance industry (including annuity and superannuation payments), for the benefit of the common man and to provide long term funds for accelerating growth of the economy.