Thaindian News

Chennai, Aug 7 (IANS) State-run non-life insurer Oriental Insurance will introduce an incentive scheme this fiscal for its high performing employees, a top official said here Friday.
“We will measure the performance of each branch on the metrics like policy issuance, claims settlement, business growth,” said M. Ramadoss, chairman and managing director of Oriental Insurance.

“If a branch meets the requisite grade, all its employees will get incentives,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an insurance seminar.

Earlier, the government had asked all the primary state-owned non-life insurers - National Insurance, New India Assurance, Oriental Insurance and United India - and reinsurer General Insurance Corp (GIC) to come up with incentive schemes.

The government has also given some directions to these five companies to formulate their respective incentive policies.

However, employees unions are not happy with these guidelines and said only a few workers would benefit if the incentive schemes were implemented according to the government directions.

“If one goes by the guidelines given by the government, the incentive scheme is not workable. Not more than 25 percent of the workforce will benefit from the incentive scheme,” J. Gurumurthy, secretary of the All India Insurance Employees Association, told IANS.

As per the government directions, employees of the five insurers will be considered for performance linked cash incentive only if two conditions are satisfied - the net profit should not be less than Rs.200 crore and the solvency ratio should be above 150 percent.

“When a company satisfies the above two conditions, then the incentive amount payable should not exceed 0.7 percent of the insurer’s gross domestic premium and 20 percent of the gross salary of the employee,” Gurumurthy said.