LIC gets two more MDs in B. Venugopal, Sunita Sharma

LIC gets two more MDs in B. Venugopal, Sunita Sharma

Mumbai: The government on Monday appointed B. Venugopal and Sunita Sharma as managing directors of Life Insurance Corp. of India Ltd (LIC) for a period of nearly two years. Venugopal currently heads the western zone of LIC in Mumbai. Sharma is the managing director of the insurer’s subsidiary(सहायक), LIC Housing Finance. Venugopal took over as the head of the Mumbai zone last year whereas Sharma has been heading LIC Housing Finance since November 2013. Both, Venugopal and Sharma will be retiring in 2019.

The top management of LIC consists of the chairman and four managing directors. The post of an MD fell vacant after V.K. Sharma was elevated as the chairman in December, and another was lying vacant since the superannuation(सेवानिवृत्ति) of S.B. Mainak in February 2016.

Usha Sangwan and Hemant Bhargava, who was appointed in mid-February, are the other two managing directors of LIC.

The pay scale of Venugopal and Sharma has been fixed at Rs205,400 to Rs224,400 (revised) for a period of five years from the date of notification of their appointment or up to date of their superannuation, or till further orders.

The interviews for these posts were conducted last November in two rounds. Venugopal was the senior most among the eight candidates who had appeared for the interview(भेंटवार्ता) . Sharma is the junior most.

Brief History Of Insurance  and   Life Insurance Corp. of India Ltd (LIC)

Life Insurance in its modern form came to India from England in the year 1818. 

Oriental Life Insurance Company started by Europeans in Calcutta was the first life insurance company on Indian Soil. 

All the insurance companies established during that period were brought up with the purpose of looking after the needs of European community and Indian natives were not being insured by these companies. 

However, later with the efforts of eminent people like Babu Muttylal Seal, the foreign life insurance companies started insuring Indian lives. 

But Indian lives were being treated as sub-standard lives and heavy extra premiums were being charged on them. 

Bombay Mutual Life Assurance Society(1870) heralded (शुभकामनाएं) the birth of first Indian life insurance company in the year 1870, and covered Indian lives at normal rates.

 Starting as Indian enterprise with highly patriotic motives, insurance companies came into existence to carry the message of insurance and social security through insurance to various sectors of society. Bharat Insurance Company (1896) was also one of such companies inspired by nationalism. 

The Swadeshi movement of 1905-1907 gave rise to more insurance companies. 

The United India in Madras, 1906

 National Indian and National Insurance in Calcutta  1906

Co-operative Assurance at Lahore were established in 1906.

 In 1907, Hindustan Co-operative Insurance Company took its birth in one of the rooms of the Jorasanko, house of the great poet Rabindranath Tagore, in Calcutta. 

The Indian Mercantile, General Assurance and Swadeshi Life (later Bombay Life) were some of the companies established during the same period. Prior to 1912 India had no legislation to regulate insurance business. 

In the year 1912, the Life Insurance Companies Act, and the Provident Fund Act were passed. The Life Insurance Companies Act, 1912 made it necessary that the premium rate tables and periodical valuations of companies should be certified by an actuary. But the Act discriminated between foreign and Indian companies on many accounts, putting the Indian companies at a disadvantage.

The first two decades of the twentieth century saw lot of growth in insurance business. From 44 companies with total business-in-force as Rs.22.44 crore,

 it rose to 176 companies with total business-in-force as Rs.298 crore in 1938. During the mushrooming of insurance companies many financially unsound concerns were also floated which failed miserably. 

The Insurance Act 1938 was the first legislation governing not only life insurance but also non-life insurance to provide strict state control over insurance business. The demand for nationalization of life insurance industry was made repeatedly in the past but it gathered momentum in 1944 when a bill to amend the Life Insurance Act 1938 was introduced in the Legislative Assembly. 

However, it was much later on the 19th of January, 1956, that life insurance in India was nationalized. About 154 Indian insurance companies, 16 non-Indian companies and 75 provident were operating in India at the time of nationalization. Nationalization was accomplished in two stages; initially the management of the companies was taken over by means of an Ordinance, and later, the ownership too by means of a comprehensive bill. The Parliament of India passed the Life Insurance Corporation Act on the 19th of June 1956, and the Life Insurance Corporation of India was created on 1st September, 1956, with the objective of spreading life insurance much more widely and in particular to the rural areas with a view to reach all insurable persons in the country, providing them adequate financial cover at a reasonable cost.

LIC had 5 zonal offices, 33 divisional offices and 212 branch offices