What OICL AO is
OICL AO recruits graduates into the Administrative Officer, Scale I cadre of Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd., a public sector general insurer headquartered in New Delhi with a strong North India network. It follows the same Generalist, Hindi Officer and Specialist recruitment shape as its sibling exams at NIACL, NICL and UIIC, and OICL has discussed a possible merger with NICL in recent years.
Who can apply
A graduate degree in any discipline, with a minimum 60% aggregate (55% for SC and ST candidates), is the requirement for the Generalist stream. Hindi Officer posts require a specified Hindi and English Master’s combination, and Specialist streams (Accounts, Actuarial, Engineering, Legal, Medical) each carry their own discipline-specific requirement. The general age band is roughly 21 to 30 years, “as on” 30 November of the recruitment year, with standard relaxations for reserved categories. Confirm the exact cutoff date against the current notification.
How the exam runs
The Preliminary Examination is a one hour test of one hundred questions across Reasoning Ability, Quantitative Aptitude and English Language, with a quarter mark penalty for each wrong answer.
The Main Examination is a two and a half hour objective test worth two hundred marks across Reasoning Ability, Quantitative Aptitude, English Language, General Awareness and, for specialist posts, Professional Knowledge, plus a thirty minute Descriptive Test of letter writing and essay that is qualifying only. Final selection weighs the Main Examination at 80% and the Interview at 20%.
Preparing the application
Photograph and signature specifications match the rest of the banking and insurance exam family: a JPEG photograph between 20 and 50 kilobytes and a JPEG signature between 10 and 20 kilobytes. The resizers on this site handle both in your browser without uploading anything.
The application fee is typically 1,000 rupees for general, OBC and EWS candidates, and 250 rupees for SC, ST and PwBD candidates, confirmed against the current notification.
On exam day
Arrive at least an hour before the reporting time on your admit card, with the printed e-admit card, a government photo identification, one recent passport size photograph and a black or blue ballpoint pen. No electronic devices are permitted inside the hall.
What the job actually involves
An OICL AO underwrites new-business proposals, assesses and prices risk, processes and authorises claims, and supervises branch operations and staff. Professional Knowledge stream postings (Accounts, Actuarial, Engineering, Legal, Medical) do the equivalent technical work in their domain, for example a Medical AO evaluating health-claim documentation. The general insurance industry’s pay scales were revised for Public Sector General Insurance Company employees under a government approval in January 2026; whether that revision has reached a fresh OICL AO notification is worth checking directly, since the most recent notification found at the time this page was written still quoted the older scale. The official Oriental Insurance website, linked above, carries the current notification, vacancy count and exact dates for the cycle you are applying to.