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