The role of Gipsa, as proposed by Poddar committee headed by Mr AN Poddar, former chairman and managing director of the National Insurance Company, will be more targeted and active than the Indian Bank Association(IBA), which is expected to be a formal association of various banks including foreign banks and private sector banks. Gipsa will provide a platform to the four state owned non-life companies to chalk out common strategy to fight out the future competition in the domestic non-life insurance sector.

The body will be headquatered in Mumbai and senior most chairman among the four subsidiaries will head the institution to be aided by secretariat. An official of the general manager rank will head the secretariat. Mr KN Bhandari, chairman & managing director of Chennai based United India will be the chairman and Mr T Lakshamanan, general manager, General Insurance Corporation will be the head of the secretariat of Gipsa.

Speaking to the Financial Express Mr Bhandari said that though the above four companies will develop their own independent indentity with a human resource policy, there is a necessity to have a common marketing and investment strategy which can be co-ordinated through the newly born Gipsa.

``Together the four companies have got a huge reserves which can be harnessed for bargaining any big business,'' said Mr Bhandari adding that each of the companies' strength can be utilised for each other. The companies are likely to have a common pricing to take on the private sector insurance companies. The companies will represent together before Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA) and Tariff Advisory Committee (TAC) for any issue and would like to develop a ``collective wisdom'' for avoiding unhealthy competition among themselves. According Mr Bhandari the companies are planning VRS for future with consultation of different unions in the industry. The four companies are gearing up to flex their muscle in the market before the legislation on broking business is introduced in the Parliament, as the opening up of the broking sector will make a lot of difference to each of the insurance companies.