Insurance
MBAs big hit with head hunters
By
Arti Sharma/TNN
Mumbai:
It’s raining jobs at the National Insurance Academy in Pune. Earlier this
month, when the first batch of 31 MBA students graduated from NIA, they were
lapped up by recruiters four weeks ahead of placement week. The reason? The
MBA students were armed with a new specialisation: insurance. Dogged by an
acute shortage of talent in the industry, insurance and IT firms with
insurance verticals simply grabbed everyone in sight. So much so that every
student now has at least two job offers to choose from.
Reliance General Insurance, now a part of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Enterprises,
has made offers to 11 students, while other players like SBI Life, and Marsh
Inc, an insurance broking firm, have made offers to four students each.
Bajaj Allianz too has hired, but the exact number of offers could not be
confirmed. International brokerage firms like Willis
and Pioneer have also joined the bandwagon.
Among IT majors, L&T Infotech has selected students for their insurance
vertical. TCS is expected to make a call too, but it isn’t clear whether
they would find too many students left to pick from. ADAE’s interest in
the students follows the expansion plans it has in store for their insurance
business. It has earmarked Rs 200 crore for the business and recently
entered the life insurance industry as well by acquiring a stake in AMP
Sanmar.
However, since almost every student has received more than one offer, the
institute has given students time till December 31, 2005 to take a final
decision. In order to ensure that only the best offers come through, the
minimum salary cut off was pegged at Rs 3.5 lakh. The highest salary offered
—Rs six lakh per annum—was made by SAS India, which offers business
solutions for the insurance industry.
“Since the entire batch of students were picked so quickly, even before we
began the placement week, it shows the demand for talent in the
industry,’’ says K C Mishra, director, NIA. The academy’s second batch
has 59 students and 23 among them have already received summer placement
offers for the next year.
Mishra has also signed a joint venture agreement with the Insurance
Institute of America and American Institute for Chartered Property and
Casualty Underwriters to become the online testing site in India. Given the
impending move towards detariffing, it is estimated that there will be a
shortage of 50,000 underwriters by 2007. With prohibitively high costs for
underwriting training and lack of experienced faculty, the number of
professionally qualified underwriters is relatively low.
The first batch has 94 students
and the plan has been sent to the IRDA. “It is a major thrust area for the
regulator and the industry,” says Mishra.