Tapan Singhel elected as new chairman of GI Council

Mumbai: In a first, the post of the chairman of General Insurance Council, v the official representative body and selfregulatory organisation (SRO) of the sector with 31 players on non-life insurance space and 11 reinsurers including GIC Re, has gone to the private sector. Tapan Singhel, MD and CEO, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, was elected as the chairman of General insurance Council (GI Council).The four members of the executive council (EC) of GI Council including Neerja Kapur, CMD, New India Assurance, S Prakash, MD, Star Health, Devesh Srivastava, CMD,GIC Re, and Singhel has elected Singhel as the next chairman of the body on Thursday last. Singhel will replace Anjan Dey, CMD, Oriental Insurance Company (OIC), who had resigned from the company and will be relieved by January end.

Kapur was inducted into executive committee of the Council on Thursday, to replace Dey who was representing the PSU general insurers in the body. The choice for the chairmanship post, which was always held by a CMD of a PSU General Insurer since its inception, tilted in favour of one of the private sector CEOs, as the market share public sector insurers, basically the four PSU general Insurers, NIA, OIC, United India Insurance and National Insurance Company- is now much less than the private sector counterparts.

The four PSU companies have little over 33 per cent of market share as of December 2022. Also, Debasish Panda, chairman, IRDAI now mostly favours private sector professionals for the key jobs in the insurance industry including in IRDAI and SROs. Private sector professionals like Thomas Devasia, Rakesh Joshi were earlier appointed as the members of the IRDAI. All committees and working groups constituted by the IRDAI on different issues are headed by CEOs of the private sector companies.

Hunt is still on for a member, Life, IRDAI and senior officials of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) have applied for the job. Earlier, after failing to get a suitable private sector professional to become secretary general of GI Council, Inderjeet Singh, director and general manager, GIC Re was selected for the post. Though Singh has already resigned from the post, still he will have to wait until completion of his notice period before he assumes office at GI Council. CR Vajayan, who is currently working as deputy secretary of the Council, is likely to be given charge of its secretary general, until the new incumbent assumes office.

GI Council is in the process of being revamped to play a much larger role, a professional body to deal with data and new innovative ideas. IRDAI is also implementing its game changing platform Bima Sugam through both GI Council and Life Insurance Council, whose members together will have 60 per cent equity stakes in it contributing Rs 50 crore of capital.