Mumbai:

The Governing Body of Insurance Council (GBIC) has recommended names, including  insurers and other technocrats,for filling up posts of nine Insurance Ombudsmen, located in different parts , mostly capital cities of states, of the country.

They have been selected, out of over 50 candidates, who were shortlisted for the interview by a panel which had among others TL Alamelu, member(non-life),IRDAI and Surabh Mishra,joint secretary, ministry of finance, Mathew Varghese, former member(non-life), IRDAI 

Vipin Anand,managing director, Life Insurance Corporation, who will retiring this month end , has been chosen for  Bengaluru, Girish Radhakrishnan, who retired as CMD of United India Insurance, has been selected for Kochi.

The other selected candidates are S.Sampathkumar for Chennai, N Sankaran for Hyderabad,B S Pandya for  Mumbai, Atul Jerath for Chandigarh, RM Singh for Bhopal, Rajiv D Sharma for Jaipur, Somnath Ghosh for Guwahati.

All these candidates need to have clearance from Central Vigilance Commissioner or Directorate of Enforcement, Revenue Intelligence and Goods and Service Tax Intelligence, and the Central Board of Direct Taxes before being appointed as the Ombudsmen.

Besides selecting 9 candidates,GBIC has created two-tier reserve of 18 officials who will be replacing a selected candidate in case he can’t join the post.Pravin Kutumber,former member,Finance, IRDAI, MK Gupta, MD , LIC ,A V Girija Kumar, former CMD, Oriental Insurance Company,are part the reserve list.

Currently, there are 17 Ombudsman Centres, covering the country, established in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai,Pune , Patna and Noida.

The Governing Body of Insurance Council (GBIC) has been established under Redressal of Public Grievances Rules 1998, to set-up and facilitate the Institution of Insurance Ombudsman in India. 

Insurance Ombudsmen are appointed by the Governing Body and are empowered to entertain wide ranging complaints in respect of personal line insurances, group insurance and policies issued to sole proprietorship.

Framing new rules in 2017, the government has now allowed policy holders to file complains against intermediaries of insurance companies incase of misselling of policies.

It is free of cost for the policy holders to file a complain with the Insurance Ombudsman and the decision of the Insurance Ombudsman are mostly biding on insurers who can challenge the verdict in the High Courts.