New Delhi:
Eleven senior officials of five state owned general insurance companies, GIC Re, New India Assurance(NIA), United India Insurance(UII), National Insurance Company(NIC) and Oriental Insurance Company(OIC) , on Thursday, have been promoted as the general managers.
Unlike a PSU bank,the post of general managers in a PSU general insurance company is a very senior level position and placed just below the post of chairman and managing director.The senior most GM in a PSU general insurnace comoany is automatically designated as a director by the central government without any additional pay but with extra perks.
The new list for 2019-20 includes four women and names of some relatively young officers who are having residual services of five to six years and will be in a position to head these companies in a matter of few years.
The officials who have been promoted are: NIA- Neerja Kapur, Arvind Kumar Logani, Inderjeet Singh, Rekha Gopalkrishnan, GIC Re-SL Tripathy and N Ramaswamy, UIIC-D Nagalaxmi, YK Shimray, Gauri Venkatesan, OIC-Aarti Mathur, NIC –S Tuli Nagpal .
Though, there are altogether eight vacancies of general mangers available in these companies in 2019-20, GIPSA’s selection committee has promoted 11 senior officials out of which three officials are currently on foreign postings. They will become general managers when they return to India.They are Ramaswamy, Kspur and Logani.
NIA,the largest state owned general insurance company, has the largest share – four officials-in the promotion list followed by UII- three officials, and GIC Re- two officials. Both NIC and OIC has each just got one of their officials promoted as GM.
Nobody from stand alone Agriculture Insurnace Company(AIC) has been elevated as a GM in 2019-20
Meanwhile, the ministry of finance is now planning to bring about changes in the existing system on how a director at the PSU general insurance company is appointed and wants approvals of appointment committee of cabinet(ACC) much like a CMD of a company is appointed.Each of the five PSU general insurers has two posts of directors.
The MoF is yet to clarify what kind of procedures it will adopt for the appointment of directors at the PSU general insurance companies.
“If like the post of CMD, MOF prescribes two years of residual services mandatory for any officials to be considered for the post of director, a lot of officials will be ineligible. Currently, even a day before retirement, officials are being appointed as directors provided there are vacancies,'' said sources in the industry .
Now, it has put all the appointments of directors, at the PSU general insurers, on the hold..
SN Rajeswari is now the senior most general manager in the PSU general insurance industry and is due for the appointment as a director.
There will be couple of vacancies at the director level in the next two-three months.
Though , TR Alumelu, CMD, AIC, has been appointed as the member, non-life , just before the election was announced in the first week of March, she has not been able to take her charge as her successor at the AIC has not been made.
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