Business leaders Don Wehby and Paul “PB” Scott have teamed up to offer Jamaicans another avenue for life and health coverage through their creation of Canopy Insurance Limited. Canopy is a multi-million-dollar investment partnership that they say will help to provide the corporate landscape with cheaper hassle-free access to health services.

Speaking on Thursday (January 16) at the official launch for the company, Wehby, the first chairman of the company, to be later succeeded by Scott, said that the venture is a 50/50 partnership between both his company and Musson, with each entity equally represented on the company’s board of management.

He shared that the company started with ambitious goals after careful and strategic analysis of the group health and life insurance landscape in Jamaica reflected some gaps in the market that needed to be filled.

“Both GraceKennedy and Musson took a look at the value and services received in exchange for the premium our companies pay annually, to provide these benefits to our employees. Our research showed a large, underserved market, and that presented an opportunity, from which we also realised that we could do it at a lower cost than our third-party providers,” he said.

“The test run using the employees of our respective companies for Canopy worked exceptionally well. It was from there that we decided to launch this business plan in the public as a real market maker in the health insurance market, and I can tell you that we have already won some big clients in the space of two to three months,” he said.

He further told the Jamaica Observer Sunday Finance that the investment has cost his company some $350 million after an agreed vision was established, to create not just another group life insurance entity but one that would “satisfy the Jamaican broker community and the country’s employers longing for greater choice, with a more modern approach to health insurance administration”.

“I am very excited about this pioneering partnership between the Musson Group and GraceKennedy and know it will be a game-changing initiative. We are very confident that this company has great potential, and that it will do great things,” Wehby said in closing.

Managing director of Canopy Insurance, Sean Scott said that since its inception back in October, the company’s membership base has grown by 60 per cent, moving from 6,000 to 10,000 members in the space of two months.

“The response of the market has been validating, encouraging, if not overwhelming. We have these two great Jamaican companies through which we have full support and backing. As we grow and continue to form the company, they will assist us with whatever is necessary to support that growth,” he told Sunday Finance.

Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton, who was also in attendance at the launch, welcomed the new addition of Canopy to the health insurance market, noting that a broad cross-section of the market is still in need of coverage.

“The Government of Jamaica fully endorses this new addition to the market place, which will allow for more competitive prices. Only some 20 per cent of Jamaicans have private insurance, with another 25 per cent or so having disease-specific coverage under the National Health Fund,” he stated.