Ajit Saran Is Oriental Ins Chairman

The Central government has appointed Ajit Saran, joint secretary (banking and insurance), Ministry of finance, to take additional charge of Oriental Insurance Company as chairman-cum-managing director (CMD).

The Centre has also asked P C Ghosh, managing director, General Insurance Corporation of India (GIC), to double up as the CMD of National Insurance Company. Prior to taking charge of GIC as managing director, Ghosh was the general manager at National Insurance.

These positions came into effect on November 1 following the retirement of B D Banerjee on October 31. Banerjee was CMD of both the state-owned insurance companies till his retirement.

 

He took up office as CMD of Oriental Insurance from his position as managing director of GIC on March 1, 2001. When M K Tandon, who was also earlier the managing director of GIC, retired from National Insurance as the CMD in September, Banerjee was asked to take dual charge of both the insurance companies as CMD.

Even as the four state-owned general insurance companies are threatened by competition from new players, the government has again decided on ad hoc arrangements for the heads of state companies.

Increasingly off late, the government has been appointing bureaucrats to head public sector financial organisations as in the case of M Damodaran of Unit Trust of India, and Shekhar Agarwal of National Housing Bank, who is also the joint secretary, Ministry of finance.

Industry sources said that such appointments go against the spirit of corporate governance, considering that GIC is the national reinsurer and one of its customers is National Insurance.

K N Bhandari, currently CMD of the New India Assurance Company, will retire in February next year. Only R Jaganathan, CMD of United India Insurance Company, has a term of three years before his retirement. GIC chairman D Sengupta is also due to retire in June 2002.

Employees at the state-owned companies are disheartened by the lack of concern showed by the government to appoint permanent heads at state-owned insurance companies.

"There is a growing concern over the performance and the need to be customer-oriented," said A K Singh, president of NOUN (National, Oriental, United, New India), Insurance Officers' Association.