Four state-owned general insurers to hire 1,000 officials

After almost two decades of recruitment freeze, four public sector general insurance companies New India Assurance, Oriental Insurance, National Insurance and United Insurance National Insurance, are currently undergoing extensive restructuring and are planning to hire 1,000 officials within next year.

Earlier, immediately after liberalisation of domestic insurance industry, these companies had gone for a massive voluntary retirement scheme to downsize almost 10% of their workforce. Together these companies currently have around 80,000 staff.

However, in the last two decades, these companies recruited officials very few in numbers and were mostly specialists like chartered accountants and other professionals.

The country's largest general insurance company, New India Assurance, is taking the lead in appointing 350 officials(assistant administrative officials) at the entry level.

Bimalendu Chakrabarty, chairman and managing director of New India Assurance, confirmed the development. "We are recruiting 350 officials . We now need more people to manage our operations efficiently and to undertake expansion," he said.

M Ramadoss, CMD, Oriental Insurance, said a total of 150 fresh officers have already joined on last Monday and the company is planning to recruit 150-250 more officers by the end of the fiscal.

G Srinivasan, CMD, United India Insurance, said the company has already recruited 150 officers during the current fiscal. The company is in the process of issuing letters of appointment to these new recruitees at the moment.

"Though there is no plan to go for head hunting again this fiscal, we have plans to recruit 250 officers during the next fiscal beginning April, 2010. We already have appointed 30 specialists during the year," he said.

The four state-owned companies are also setting up extensive IT network which would only interconnect all their offices but also provide platform to sell their products online.

The companies, which have almost lost 40% of their market shares post liberalisation, had hired consultants by paying almost Rs 17 crore each to restructure their operations

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) was hired by New India Assurance , Oriental Insurance and United India Insurance while National Insurance had roped in PricewaterhousrCooopers for preparing a comprehensive restructuring programme for these companies.

Thecompanies are also now undertaking wage negotiations for their employees.