New Delhi:
Three committees formed by the ministry of finance(MoF) has interviewed nine candidates on Thursday for selecting new CMDs of three public sector general insurance companies- New India Assurance(NIA),United India Insurance(UII) and National Insurance Company(NIC).
Though 10 candidates were called for the interview , nine had appeared as Avinanda Ghosh, general manger, Agriculture Insurance Comoany remained absent.
Each of the committee had two members. The first panel comprised of Rajeev Kumar, secretary, department of financial services(DFS) and GN Bajpai, former chairman, Sebi..second panel had SC Khuntia, chairman, IRDAI and T Bhargava, a former acturay at Life Insurance Corporation (LIC). while the third panel had C. Chandramoul, secretary Department of Personnel and Training(DoPT) and Mathew Vergheese, a fomer member(non-life) of IRDA.
“The results should be out in a month and all eyes are on who will be CMD of NIA, the largest general insurer having operations in 28 countries,’’ said industry sources.
While the post of CMD at NIC has already fallen vacant as K Sanat Kumar retired in Apr end, both the posts at UII and NIA will fall vacant when MN Sarma and G Srinivasan will retire in May end and July end respectively.
The MOF in terms of seniority has short-listed 10 names- Hemant G. Rokade, general manager (GM) & director, NIA, three senior most GMs of Delhi based Agriculture Insurance Company(AIC)-Malay K Poddar,Rajeev Chaudhry,Avinanda Ghosh- Dinesh Waghela, general manger, GIC Re, Siddharth Pradhan, GM, NIA, Girish Radhakrishnan, GM, NIA, Atul Sahai,GM, Oriental Insurance Company (OIC), Tajinder Mukherjee, GM, NIA, S. N. Rajeswari, GM, NIA for the interview.
Pradhan was only be interviewed for the posts of CMD at NIC and UII while rest of the candidates will be considered for all the three posts.Pradhan qualifies for the interview of only two CMD posts as he is falling short of mandatory condition of “two years of residual services’’ when the vacancy of CMD at NIA will happen.
The MoF’s move to fill up the posts of CMDs at NIC and UII, two of the merging companies out of the three- third being the Oriental Insurance Company(OIC)- to create a new general insurance behemoth, at this moment, has once again the kept the industry guessing about the deadline for the mega- merger that is supposed to be completed in the year end.