Interview for the selection of chairman of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and managing director will be held in Delhi on January 4. The selection process will be conducted by Banks Board Bureau (BBB) and eight officials will be interviewed for both the posts. Current chairman VK Sharma’s tenure ended on December 31. One MDs post is vacant as Usha Sangwan retired on September 30.
The eight candidates called for the interview include Vipin Anand, zonal manager, Mumbai and Raj Kumar, CEO of LIC Mutual Fund. Others are K Ganesh, Mukesh Kumar Gupta, MR Kumar, HS Shashi Kumar, TC Susheel Kumar and S Nallakuttalam. Senior officials in the insurance industry said that this is the first time BBB will be interviewing all the eight officials who are currently in the executive director-grade, heading different segments of LIC, to select the chairman.
VK Sharma was acting as LIC chairman on September 2016 and, on December 2016, he took over as chairman after SK Roy resigned, nearly two years ahead of his retirement. In the next few months, other three MDs will be retiring. Officials said that, Sunita Sharma will retire by March 2019, B Venugopal in May 2019 and Hemant Bhargava in July 2019. “It will take some time to announce new chairman of LIC and we expect Hemant Bhargava to be appointed as acting chairman,” said a top official.