Interviews To Select Head Of India’s Insurance Regulatory Authority On March 5
Interviews to select the next IRDAI chief after the post fell vacant this month will be conducted on Mar 5.
Interviews to select India’s next insurance regulator after the post fell vacant this month will be conducted on March 5, two senior officials aware of the development told BloombergQuint on the condition of anonymity.
The interviews will be held two weeks after TS Vijayan retired as chairman of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India on Feb. 20. The delay is usual in such senior appointments as the selection process takes time, one of the two people quoted above said.
So far, the shortlisted candidates are Nilesh Sathe, member (life) at IRDAI; VK Sharma, chairman at Life Insurance Corporation of India; three LIC managing directors Hemant Bhargava, B Venugopal and Sunita Sharma; G Srinivasan, chairman and managing director at New India Assurance; and K Sanath Kumar, chairman and managing director at National Insurance Company. Apart from these, Former Chief Secretary of Karnataka Subhash Chandra Khuntia has confirmed that he has been called for an interaction on March 5.
The Financial Sector Regulatory Appointments Search Committee, headed by Cabinet Secretary PK Sinha, will recommend the selected candidate to the Ministry of Finance, which will take the final call. The suggestion would be sent in the same week after the interviews, but the government may take up to two weeks for a final decision, one of the officials quoted above said.
The delay in naming the IRDAI chief is nothing new. Appointment of IRDAI’s members of distribution and finance was delayed by up to a year. Both were named on Feb. 16. Similarly, the appointment of the fourth deputy governor at the Reserve Bank of India has also been pending for seven months as the government decided to restart the selection process and call fresh applications. The new deadline for submitting applications is March 14, according to the advertisement on the Finance Ministry’s website.
The intelligence bureau clearance for appointing IRDAI members took up to three months after the candidates were finalised and that process will be followed to select the next chairman as well, an official from IRDAI told BloombergQuint on condition of anonymity. That would mean an additional delay of three months even if the ministry decides on the final candidate in March, he said.