BMO Insurance has launched a health and dental insurance product for individual Canadians, distributed through BMO Insurance Solutions Inc. and underwritten in partnership with GreenShield, Canada's only national non-profit health care and insurance organization.
BMO Health and Dental Insurance is designed for Canadians without employer-sponsored group benefits. It offers tiered coverage including prescription drugs, paramedical services such as physiotherapy and massage therapy, mental health support, vision care and dental coverage from basic through to major services.
Every plan includes four virtual general practitioner visits per year, personalized virtual counselling, travel emergency medical coverage for trips up to 30 days and access to a digital benefits app for claims management and prescription administration.
Rohit Thomas, president and CEO of BMO Insurance, said: "By simplifying plan options and the application experience, we are helping clients make confident decisions about their health and dental coverage."
The launch targets a well-documented gap in the Canadian health coverage market. A 2025 study by PolicyMe found that 22% of Canadians have no health or dental coverage at all, with Canadians aged 55 and above the most likely to be uninsured at 21%, and Gen Z reporting 20% uninsured rates as younger workers age out of parental plans and enter a workforce that often lacks traditional benefits. Even among insured Canadians, the same study found 52% report skipping, delaying or reducing health appointments, with dental care the most commonly deferred service at 35%.
The individual market that BMO and GreenShield are targeting sits outside the reach of employer group plans and the scope of the federal Canadian Dental Care Plan, which covers only uninsured Canadians with household incomes below $90,000.
As of April 2026, more than 4.3 million Canadians have received care under the federal plan, which has generated over $6 billion in claims and is administered by Sun Life under a government contract worth nearly $747 million over five years, according to Benefits and Pensions Monitor. For Canadians above that income threshold or those who gain private coverage, the CDCP ceases to apply, making private individual products the only alternative.
BMO Health and Dental Insurance enters a market with well-established competitors.
Sun Life offers its Personal Health Insurance series across three tiers — Basic, Standard and Enhanced — with dental included in all plans, and basic plans starting at approximately $62 to $85 per month for a young single adult, according to PolicyMe. Manulife's flagship individual offering is Flexcare, a modular product allowing policyholders to select health, dental and drug coverage independently, with its entry-level Flexcare Starter typically starting around $97 to $115 per month.
Meanwhile, Canada Life competes through its Freedom to Choose plans, offering both Select and Guaranteed options, the latter providing coverage for pre-existing conditions following a questionnaire, according to PolicyAdvisor. Desjardins distributes individual coverage through its SOLO Healthcare program with Basic and Enhanced tiers and optional drug and dental add-on modules, backed by a financial group managing over $10 billion in annual premiums. RBC Insurance and iA Financial Group also participate in the segment, as does GreenShield through its own direct individual plans.
BMO's entry differentiates primarily on distribution breadth and digital integration, leveraging its national retail banking footprint to reach customers who may not engage with insurance through traditional broker or advisor channels.
The partnership also reflects a meaningful shift in GreenShield's market standing. GreenShield's 2025 strategic plan focused on becoming Canada's first payer-provider, integrating care delivery alongside coverage across insurance, pharmacy, mental health and digital health, according to a company impact report published in May 2026.
Since launching that strategy, GreenShield has increased revenues by 2.5 times and now supports more than 7.5 million Canadians. In February 2026, Morningstar DBRS assigned a Financial Strength Rating of A for GreenShield's insurance operations and an Issuer Rating of BBB (high) for Green Shield Holdings Inc., both with Stable trends.
Those ratings matter commercially because they establish GreenShield as a credible institutional underwriting partner for distribution arrangements of the kind now announced with BMO, and signal that the organization's non-profit model is not an obstacle to competing at scale with the established life and health insurers that have historically dominated this segment.
The BMO-GreenShield product reflects a structural shift underway in the individual health insurance segment. The federal CDCP's full rollout is drawing lower-income Canadians into publicly administered dental coverage, concentrating the private commercial opportunity among middle-to-higher income individuals, the self-employed, contract workers and recently retired Canadians. Banks with insurance distribution capabilities are well placed to reach that segment, and BMO is not the only one watching it closely.
