Life Insurance Corporation appoints New Chairman

LIC has announced the appointment of Mr Rakesh Singh, additional secretary in the department of financial services, as the interim chairman. The incumbent, Mr T S Vijayan, will continue in the post of the Managing Director. The announcement from LIC, which has traditionally combined the post of Managing Director and CHairman, has taken the industry by surprise and many have read it as a demotion for Mr Vijayan. Mr Vijayan's performance report may have been adversely affected by the loan for money scandal that hit LIC housing finance a few months back. However, that is not to take away from LIC's brilliant performance in the last financial year when they increased their market share from 64.86% to 68.7 %. At a time when there was significant degrowth among the private life insurance players becasue of the changes on ULIPS, LIC exploited the field perfectly by selling more traditional products.