N Ramaswamy, general manger, GIC Re

Four senior officials who had appeared for the virtual interview are- N Ramaswamy, general manager, GIC Re, Hitesh Joshi, general manger, GIC Re, M Rajeswari Singh, general manger & director, United India Insurance, BS Rahul, general manger, Agriculture Insurance Company

New Delhi:

On Tuesday, the Financial Services Institution Bureau (FSIB), has selected  N Ramaswamy, general manger, GIC Re as the next CMD of the company while M Rajeswari Singh, general manager & director (GMD), United India Insurance, has been chosen as the CMD of National Insurance Company(NIC).

After due approval of Appointments Committee of Cabinet(ACC) headed by the Prime minister, Ramaswamy will get exactly a two-year term while Singh, who started her career in the crop cell of General Insurance Corporation in 1987, will continue upto 2027.

The post of CMD at GIC Re will fall vacant after Devesh Srivastav completes his 4-year tenure in September end after reaching 60 while NIC CMD post needs to be filled up after Suchita Gupta calls it a day in August end.

Ramaswamy had joined General Insurance Corporation in 1988 and would retire in Sept 2025 and was earlier posted in London to head GIC Re’s UK branch.

Normally, the government in recent years has preferred to choose a GIC Re insider to head the institution as the person needs to have reinsurance expertise to run the global company which is Asia’s third largest reinsurer.

Singh was a general manager in Agriculture Insurance Corporation(AIC) ,where she had worked since the inception of the company, before being shifted to UII and this is for the first time an officer of AIC has been picked up to head a multiline general insurer.

Four shortlisted senior officials who had appeared for the virtual interview are- Ramaswamy, Hitesh Joshi, general manger, GIC Re, Singh, BS Rahul, general manger, Agriculture Insurance Company.

The fifth shortlisted candidate Smita Srivastav, GMD, New India Assurance, had pulled out of the race voluntarily.

One of the basic criteria of shortlisting of names for CMD posts is that the candidates need to have two years of residual services by the time vacancies happen.

FSIB, constituted under Bhanu Pratap Sharma, former secretary, Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has three insurance experts, Girija Kumar, former CMD of OIC, Sujay Banarji, former member of IRDAI and Usha Sangwan, former MD of Life Insurance Corporation(LIC).

Along with these three experts, the panel has Debasish Panda, chairman, IRDAI and Vivek Joshi, secretary, Department of Financial services(DFS).