NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — American International Group Inc., the insurer giving employees at least $619 million in retention pay, may face a congressional hearing on compensation policies put in place after being bailed out by the government.

A hearing could be held as soon as March, said Representative Elijah Cummings, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Chief executive officer Edward Liddy is paying at least 4,200 employees to remain while he dismantles the company, AIG said on Thursday in documents provided to Cummings.

Edolphus Towns, chairman of the committee, "is telling me they definitely will be holding a hearing", Cummings said on Friday in an interview. Shrita Sterlin, a spokeswoman for Towns, said AIG was "a priority", in addition to other issues remaining from his predecessor, former chairman Henry Waxman.

Hearings may put new pressure on AIG to explain why managers will get as much as $4 million after the company accepted a taxpayer-funded bailout now valued at about $150 billion. Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, has requested information on the retention programme, originally described in a September filing as covering only 130 executives.

AIG disclosed in a November regulatory filing that it was paying $469 million to help retain at least 2,231 employees. It said business units also had retention programmes, without listing how many workers were included.

Yesterday, AIG told Cummings that 1,795 people in subsidiaries were getting a total of $150 million. The $619 million tally for the cost of the programme doesn't include awards to employees in AIG's financial-products unit, the firm said.

After AIG got an $85 billion loan in September that saved it from bankruptcy, top executives received retention pay, then were asked to help pick lower-ranked employees to also get the money, Cummings said. The rescue package was restructured to total about $150 billion in November, giving AIG a lower interest rate and more time to repay a $60 billion loan.

Liddy "assured me that although they have five years to pay the loan, they'll definitely have it paid long before then", Cummings said in an interview in the Capitol building during a House voting session.

Of the first 168 executives offered retention payments, only five have left, showing that the payments were effective, Liddy said, according to the lawmaker. The awards range from $92,500 to $4 million for employees earnings $160,000 to $1 million in annual salary, AIG said in a December 5 letter.

AIG has said the payments are vital to keep employees in place while selling businesses including life-insurance operations in the US and Asia and a plane-leasing unit. Critics said AIG downplayed the extent of the programme and that payments aren't necessary while job markets are weak.