The Ministry of Finance is aiming to include more officials from the insurance industry in the Banks Board Bureau (BBB) to enlarge and relaunch the organization. The ministry hopes that by doing so, it would be able to nominate persons for positions at public sector insurers and speed up recruiting at the highest level of state-owned financial institutions.
Over the following several months, the union finance ministry plans to recruit new members, rebuild the bureau, and suggest new names to the Cabinet Appointments Committee (ACC), People familiar with the situation were quoted by Mint. The revamped BBB, which would oversee a broader range of financial organizations, might also be given a new name.
Following the overhaul, the board will be allowed to suggest full-time hires at financial institutions whose CEOs are now assigned extra responsibilities under interim agreements.
The proposal to restructure BBB comes after a Delhi High Court panel pushed for it last year, claiming that the body was unqualified to suggest general managers and directors for PSU general insurers.
A case is also ongoing in the Delhi High Court, in which a PSU insurance executive is contesting BBB’s nomination of United India Insurance’s chairman and managing director. The BBB’s appointments have been halted as a result of these difficulties.
The BBB is now effectively defunct, after the body’s part-time chairman, BP Sharma, and other members’ extended terms expired in April. The finance ministry is considering not just expanding the body, but also renaming it and giving it a new appointment mandate.
The government established the Banks Board Bureau in 2016 to select executive directors, managing directors, and chief executives of PSBs and financial institutions. Since 2018, the board has been proposing directors, chairpersons, and CEOs for PSU general insurance businesses.
