“We have been on a strong growth trajectory of new business with an equal focus on retention of existing business and generation of profits. We are proud at the all-round growth of the company, reflected in retail new business premium growth of 43 percent, increase in 13th month persistency to 76 percent and annual profit of Rs 51 crore,” said RM Vishakha, managing director and chief executive officer, IndiaFirst Life Insurance

The MOF in terms of seniority has short-listed 10 names- Hemant G. Rokade, 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

The devastation comes over 12 days after storms hit Uttar Pradesh (UP), Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand and Punjab, killing 134 people and injuring over 400. UP was the worst affected, accounting for 80 deaths, most of them in Agra district in the western part of the state.

`The combined ratio has dropped by 8 per cent due to improvement in the claims ratio and expense ratio of the company. This has been the result of various steps taken to improve underwriting and claims management of the company. The ROE has been healthy at 16.1 per cent,’’ said G Srinivasan,CMD, NIA

The epicentre of the quake, measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale, was Afghanistan-Tajikistan border and it occurred at 4.01 pm, J L Gautam, Head (Operations), National Seismological Centre (NSC) said.