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Come February 13, the Central government-owned Oriental Insurance Company Ltd and National Insurance Company Ltd will begin an organisational rejig on a pilot basis, top officials said.

Citing that major corporate policies will be renewed next month and reinsurance deals will also be finalised in March, the Officer's Association of Oriental Insurance have requested the management to defer the implementation now and go live from next fiscal onwards.

On its part, the Joint Forum of Trade Unions and Associations (JFTU) told its constituents to carry out agitational programmes across the country against the management's move.

Removal of the division office and setting up of more dedicated branches to cater to the corporate sector with an annual premium of Rs 3 crore, and introduction of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are the major changes in the company's rejig plans.

In an identical communication to their employees, Sunita Tuli Nagpal and R.R. Singh, both General Managers and Directors and holding Joint Charge, Chairman-cum-Managing Director (CMD) of Oriental Insurance, and Suchita Gupta, CMD, National Insurance on Friday outlined the company's initial rejig plans.

According to them, the new Enterprise Level structure will be Regional Office-Branch/Micro Office. With the Division Office structure removed, all the operating offices will report to the Regional Office.

The increased regionalisation will ensure 100 per cent coverage in terms of claims, underwriting and accounts, the communication notes.

On a pilot basis, the new structure will be implemented in four regions. Initially, all the retail businesses in these four regions will be migrated to the new organisational model to study the effect and carry out any corrections, the CMDs told their colleagues.

The top officials also assured the employees that they will not be required to relocate physically immediately.

Speaking to IANS, Vishnu Aggarwal, General Secretary, Oriental Insurance Company Officers' Association, said: "Most of the corporate policy renewals happen next month. Similarly, the reinsurance deals are also concluded in March. We have requested the management to implement the news structure from the new fiscal onwards, which is just one-and-half months away."

According to him, Oriental Insurance has decided to rejig the organisational structure first in New Delhi Regional Office-1, Regional Offices in Hyderabad, Pune and Bhubaneswar.

On the other hand, National Insurance will roll out its pilot in Nagpur Regional Office, Kolkata Regional Office -2, Vishakhapatnam Regional Office, and Dehradun Regional Office.

In a letter to the Oriental Insurance, Aggarwal said the employee associations have not been consulted on the rejig as against the earlier agreement that they will be consulted before implementing any new initiatives.

According to JFTU, the GIPSA management has taken the rejig decision under pressure from the Department of Financial Services without having a complete report of the consultant (EY) and its feasibility study.

Union leaders told IANS that the two other government-owned general insurers -- United India Insurance Company Ltd and The New India Assurance Company Ltd -- are yet to issue similar rejig communications.

With major corporate policies coming up for renewals in March, there will be a sort of uncertainty in the minds of insuring companies about the impact of the rejig on the services and the discussion topic will be on the same rather than the premium and coverage, industry officials say.