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Tata AIA Life Insurance is seeing a churn at the senior management in recent months. It has a new deputy chief executive officer, apart from a CEO-designate who’s joined from AIA Sri Lanka.
M Suresh, the current managing director and CEO, had decided to move on and is expected to quit the company by the end of this month. Shah Rouf, who is CEO of AIA Sri Lanka, is the designated successor. Meanwhile, Mukesh Dhawan, who was deputy CEO and chief distribution officer (CDO), has moved to AIA in a global role and his position filled by Ravi Vishwanath.
All CEO appointments have to be approved by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority. Hence, Tata AIA’s would also be subject to this.
Shah Rouf has about 18 years experience in the sector. He was with Aviva NDB Insurance in Sri Lanka, before it was acquired by AIA Group in December 2012. He was retained in the new AIA team.
Late last year, Chief Investment Officer Saravana Kumar had quit the company. His position was filled by Harshad Patil last month. Also, Vivek Mathur, the chief financial officer, had quit to join CignaTTK Health Insurance as its CFO.
In October 2012, Tata AIA had appointed Dhawan as Dy CEO and CDO. He had joined from AIA, where he was the group’s regional chief agency officer, responsible for the Singapore, Malaysia, China and Taiwan markets. Dhawan was responsible for creating and implementing new strategies in marketing, product development and distribution, a role to be essayed by Vishwanath presently.
The company in its response said, "Tata AIA Life has long been known as an ideal training ground for the industry because of its strong processes. We have hence had some senior executives moving on as part of their natural career progression. We are very optimistic about the prospects of the Life Insurance sector and are gearing up as an organization to take ourselves to the next level of growth and development."
Tata AIA Life has seen a 16.2 per cent reduction in total premiums for the April-December 2013 period and a 11.9 per cent drop in new business premiums for the period compared to the same span a year before. The life insurance sector saw a 22.4 per cent rise in new premiums for the same period this year compared to last year.
The company is a joint venture between Tata Sons and AIA International, where Tata Sons and its nominees hold 74 per cent; 26 per cent is held by AIA International, the maximum permissible in the sector under the current foreign direct investment norms.
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21 March, 2014: The article has been updated with the company's response.
