GIPSA stands for General insurance public sector association and the four public sector insurers namely New India Assurance Co Ltd, Oriental Insurance, United India insurance, and National insurance, the national reinsurer General insurance corporation of India (GIC Re), and Agriculture insurance corporation (AIC) are a part of it.
These public sector insurance and reinsurance companies conduct competitive entrance tests which generally includes an online multiple-choice type test (Prelims and mains), group discussion and personal interview for the entry level vacancies of assistant manager level. Government job is a dream of many in our country and every year millions of aspirants take out these entrance exams to make their career in public sector financial sector.
GIPSA is the body for co-ordinating and deciding the common interests of the member companies which includes human resource. The promotion policy for officers was first introduced in February 1990 and later revised in 2006. This promotion policy is applicable for all cadres upto and including Scale VII (GM).
Promotion for scale VI and VII is solely based on merit and promotion of scale I to V is based on seniority and other parameters like written test, insurance qualifications, work experience, and interview. The association conducts all India competitive examination for promotion of Scale 1, 2, 3, and 4 level officers to higher cadre. From 2019 – 20 financial year onwards the written exam is applicable only for Fast track promotion channel.
GIPSA comes out with the vacancies in place for promotion and for all promotions of scale 1 to 4 there is an online multiple-choice type test called the trade test. The purpose of trade test is to test the technical knowledge of insurance, legal and regulatory aspects for compliance, reasoning ability etc. The trade test is conducted for seven departments as below, out of these seven the candidate has to opt for any four as per his knowledge and interest.
Department 1 – Fire and engineering Insurance
Department 2 – Marine and Aviation Insurance
Department 3 – Motor Insurance (Own damage and Third party)
Department 4 – Miscellaneous Insurance (Other than motor, aviation and engineering)
Department 5 – Reinsurance (Treaty, facultative and accounts)
Department 6 – Finance (includes accounts, investment and IT)
Department 7 – Human resource (Including HR Legal)
Pattern of the trade test – The trade test will be conducted all over India at designated centres. The candidate has to answer 100 questions out of 120 i.e. there will be 30 maximum questions from each department out of which the candidate needs to answer 25. Duration of the test in two and half hours and the qualifying marks is 60% for general and 45% for reserve category officers. There is also negative marking which id 1/3rd per wrong answer. No negative marking is there for shortfall in answering questions.
The excess questions will be ignored while marking for the test and any question beyond that left unanswered will get zero marks. In the design of questions there is a suitable weightage for technical and human resource questions, therefore, even if you have not opted for department 7 anyways you should be prepared for some HR questions which you are very likely to see in this exam.
Below we present the tentative weightage assigned to various parameters for considering promotion of a potential candidate, so that the candidate can prepare himself well in advance for the race.
| Parameter | Scale I to II | Scale II to III | Scale III to IV | Scale IV to V |
| Written Test | 30 | 30 | 30 | 25 |
| Insurance Qualification | 5 | 5 | – | – |
| Work Record | 30 | 35 | 45 | 45 |
| Seniority | 35 | 30 | 25 | 15 |
| Interview | – | – | – | 15 |
As per the amendment in promotion policies, once an officer qualifies the written test, he has the option of appearing in promotion exercises for subsequent three years.
Fast Track Promotions – 40% of the vacancies for each scale is earmarked for fast track promotions. The candidate should have a designation of associate or fellow from Insurance institute of India and have scored the minimum qualifying marks in the trade test. Some minimum years of continuous service is also a requirement from the date of selection in the existing cadre. In this category for every mark scored in written test a score of 0.4 is allotted which is then combined with other parameters to publish the final result. GIPSA companies separately publish the results on promotion in their website portals.
There are many mock tests and question banks available on the internet by which one can prepare for the trade test. Marking correct answers and completing the test in time are both equally important and to strike a balance between the two adequate practise is the key. Text book of respective departments offered by Insurance institute of India for its Licentiate, associate and fellowship examinations are good enough for the theory part and a for practise a question bank kind of book can be opted which is easily available to purchase online.
In the line of the merger of PSU banks in the recent past, the Indian government is more inclined to merge one or more than one public sector insurers part of the GIPSA to form a mega PSU general insurer. In the coming time there can be some change in the promotion policy as well but the importance of the written test cannot be overstated and the same is likely to continue to be a part of the process.