About Us
For more than 100 years the name J.S. Johnson & Company has been synonymous with insurance in The Bahamas. Yet the enterprise began almost as far removed from the world of insurance as possible. Founded in the mid-1800s by Joseph Samuel Johnson, the original operation grew sisal and canned pineapples for export, producing more than 75,000 cases of canned pineapples at the height of its success in that industry.
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In 1919, Joseph Samuel’s nephew and general manager of J.S. Johnson, W.C.B. Johnson, also Speaker of the House of Assembly at the time, made a significant step in expanding the company’s range of business by arranging an agency with the UK-based Eagle Star Insurance Company. Eight years later, Johnson negotiated the first binding authority for a Bahamian operation to write insurance through Lloyd’s of London.
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W.C.B Johnson’s son, Joseph S. Johnson, formally incorporated the company in 1959, with a staff of just four people and a small office on Elizabeth Avenue. A decade later, that number had grown to 15 and the numbers continued to expand under the leadership and vision of Charles Fernie. The insurance operations of the company increased so much over the following decades, in fact, that it prompted the discontinuance of the company’s involvement in the canned goods industry and another move to a larger office space in the Centreville House, just off Collins Avenue.
In a significant move for the company, influenced largely by the vision of Charles Fernie, the company’s Board of Directors voted to offer shares of J.S. Johnson to the public in 1986. The development made it possible for numerous Bahamians to become shareholders of the company for the first time, and for the company to eventually be listed as a tradeable security on the Bahamas International Securities Exchange (BISX).
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Throughout the years J.S. Johnson has been the General Agent for some of the largest and most trusted insurance providers around the world, including Alliance Excess, Continental, Federal, the Insurance Company of North America, Eagle Star (for over 70 years) and General Accident, Fire and Life Assurance Corp. However, after hurricane Andrew in 1992 and other tropical disturbances in subsequent years, several multi-national companies withdrew from the region, leading the major local brokers to set-up local insurance companies. The establishment of the Insurance Company of The Bahamas (ICB) in 1997 was a significant development for JS Johnson, which now serves as that company’s principal agent.
Today, J.S. Johnson enjoys strong working relationships with its international network partners, including Aon, one of the largest insurance brokers in the world, Island Heritage, and Lloyd’s of London. These business relationships give the company access to all the major insurance markets across the world and enable it to provide a wide range of coverages to meet almost any need, whether personal or commercial.
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The company employs more than 150 staff, many of whom have numerous years of experience and hold professional qualifications from insurance institutions in the United Kingdom and Canada. In fact, the company boasts of having the largest number of professionally-qualified General Insurance staff in The Bahamas.