New Delhi:

After finance minister Arun Jaitly made a Budgetary proposal for the merger of three state owned general insurers,   , finance ministry officials met the CMDs of these companies-Oriental Insurance, National Insurance and United Insurance- in New Delhi on Friday.

 

GIPSA, the umbrella body of all the four state-owned non-life insurers, in course of time will appoint a consultant to prepare the strategies for the merger, said sources who attended the meeting.

Ravi Mittal, additional secretary, Ministry of Finance (MoF) in his address in the meeting, had asked the the three CMDs to keep their ongoing business as usual including effecting all promotional exercises, without causing any major disruptions

 

GIPSA had earlier stalled the internal promotional exercises among the five members including GIC Re in January due to some technical reasons and incidentally, after a few days, Jaitley had announced the merger of the three state-owned non-life insurers by the next fiscal-end.

 

As the government has made it clear that business will be as usual, it means that the year’s promotion exercise will be conducted soon, said sources..

 

Examination date for the promotion may be declared by GIPSA in May, sources familiar with the development said. It means that there will not be any forceful retirement or exit for the time being. Redeployment will be done which  means excess staff will be transferred to other offices and places, the sources said, adding, that things are yet to be clear on sensitive issues like `VRS and Pension'..

K Sanath Kumar, CMD, National Insurance Company 

When contacted, K Sanath Kumar, CMD, National Insurance Company, who had attended the meeting, said,“ Today there was a meeting with officials of Department of Financial services and CMDs of three PSU Insurers identified for merger, the first such meeting after Budget announcement.”

 

The discussions, he said, were preliminary and it was agreed that there would be more discussions at various levels to work out a road map and the time lines.

 

“Till that time it would be business as usual including promotion exercise etc. The Government assured that neither the customers nor the employees will have any grounds for any concern,’’ he said..