Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) on Friday got its first female managing director and another new MD.
The government has appointed Usha Sangwan, executive director of corporate communication and V K Sharma, MD & CEO of LIC Housing Finance as the two new MDs.
With these two appointments, LIC iMs set to function at its full strength of four managing directors (MDs) after almost two years. This includes S B Mainak, Sharma, Sushobhan Sarkar and Sangwan as MD and S K Roy as LIC chairman. Finance ministry sources said the two new MDs have been appointed till they retire from the corporation.
According to norms, LIC can have four MDs, apart from chairman, as part of its top management. After former managing director T S Vijayan retired in November 2012, there were only two MDs - Sushobhan Sarkar and Thomas Mathew T.
When former chairman D K Mehrotra retired in May, athew took over as in-charge chairman, before retiring at the end of June. Later, following Mathew’s retirement, managing director S K Roy was appointed chairman, with Sushobhan Sarkar as the only MD. To fill this void, in July, S B Mainak (executive director-investments) was appointed MD.
In April, the government had interviewed five candidates for the post of LIC chairman, including managing director Sushobhan Sarkar, LIC Housing Finance MD and chief executive V K Sharma and three executive directors S B Mainak, S K Roy and Usha Sangwan. As Roy holds the chairman’s post, the other four would hold the posts of MDs.
LIC is the India’s largest insurer, with 83% market share in terms of the number of policies, and about 71% in terms of premiums. During 2012-13, the insurer collected new business premium of Rs 76,245.63 crore (Rs 762.45 billion).
