Financial Services Institutions Bureau (FSIB), the head-hunting agency for public sector banks and insurance firms, has selected Girija Subramanian, Chairperson and MD of Agriculture Insurance Company (AIC), and Bhupesh Sushil Rahul, AIC General Manager, as the next CMDs of New India Assurance and United India Insurance, respectively.
After virtual interviews over two days since Wednesday, the FSIB, for the first time, selected nine executive directors for PSU general insurers.
The post of CMD at United India Insurance is vacant as S Tripathy retired in February. The top post at New India Assurance will fall vacant after Neerja Kapur retires in late April.
These names will be sent to the DFS which will send them to the Appointments Committee of Cabinet headed by PM Narendra Modi for the final approvals. Normally, it takes over two months for all the approvals to be in place. With elections around, it may take longer as the PM will be campaigning, sources say.
The nine executive directors selected for PSU general insurers are: Rashmi Bajpai and Amit Misra for Oriental Insurance Company (OIC), HJ Joshi and Radhika CS for GIC Re, T. Babu Paul and CG Prasad for National Insurance Company (NICL), Sunita Gupta and PC Gothwal for United India Insurance and Dasarathi Singh for AICIL. As many as 25 general managers from the sector were in the race for nine posts of EDs.
The six general managers who were shortlisted for the selections of two CMDs were: Rahul, Hitesh Joshi, Jayshree Bala and V Balkrishna from GIC Re, Sunita Gupta and Rekha Solanki from Oriental Insurance Company (OIC).
This is for the first time that a serving CMD of a PSU entity once again participated in the selection exercise meant to choose a CMD of another PSU insurer. Previously, there have been instances when the CMD of one PSU general insurer was shifted to another PSU general insurer by an executive order of the DFS duly approved by the ACC.