Tapan Singhel, MD and CEO, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance
The choice for the chairmanship of GI Council tilted in favour of one of the private sector CEOs as the market share public sector insurers, basically the four PSU general Insurers, NIA, OIC, United India Insurance and National Insurance Company- is now much less than the private sector companies. The four PSU companies have little over 33 per cent of market share as of December 2022
Mumbai:
Reflecting the new status of rising private sector in the Indian general insurance sector, one more leading position of the segment, for the first time, has gone in its favour as Tapan Singhel, MD and CEO, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, has been chosen as the chairman of General insurance Council (GI Council), the official representative body and self regulatory organisation(SRO) of the sector with 31 players.
The four members of the executive council (EC) of GI Council including Neerja Kapur, CMD, New India Assurance, S Prakash, MD, Star Health, Devesh Srivastava, CMD,GIC Re, and Singhel has elected Singhel as the next chairman of the body yesterday
Singhel will replace Anjan Dey, CMD, Oriental Insurance Company(OIC), who had resigned from the company and will be relieved by January end.
Kapur, after getting inducted into executive committee of the Council on Thursday, to replace Dey who was representing the PSU general insurers in the body, had offered her candidature for the chairmanship but later withdrew it as private sector CEOs laid their claims on the post vociferously.
The choice for the chairmanship, which was always held by a CMD of a PSU General Insurer since its inception, tilted in favour of a private sector CEO, as the market share public sector insurers, basically the four PSU general Insurers, NIA, OIC, United India Insurance and National Insurance Company- is now much less than the private sector counterparts consisting of multiline general insurers and stand alone health insurers.
The four PSU companies have little over 33 per cent of market share as of December 2022.
Also, Debasish Panda, chairman, IRDAI now mostly favours private sector professionals for the key jobs in the insurance industry including in IRDAI and SROs.
Private sector professionals like Thomas Devasia, Rakesh Joshi were earlier appointed as the members of the IRDAI.
All committees and working groups constituted by the IRDAI on different issues are headed by CEOs of the private sector companies.
Hunt is still on for a member, Life, IRDAI and senior officials of Life Insurance Corporation(LIC) who have applied for the job said it would go to a private sector professional.
Earlier, after failing to get a suitable private sector professional to become secretary general of GI Council, Indeerjit Singh, director and general manager, GIC Re was selected for the post.
GI Council is in the process of being revamped to play a much larger role, a professional body to deal with data and new innovative ideas.
IRDAI is also implementing its game changing platform Bima Sugam through both GI Council and Life Insurance Council, whose members together will have 60 per cent equity stakes in it contributing Rs 50 crore of capital.