What is the difference between an additional insured and a certificate holder?

An additional insured is a party to whom your liability coverage is actually extended — they receive real coverage rights under the policy. A certificate holder simply receives a copy of the certificate of insurance as evidence that coverage exists; being a certificate holder grants no coverage rights whatsoever. This distinction matters because naming a lender only as a certificate holder is one of the most common reasons a policy fails a lender's insurance review. Most lenders require all three: mortgagee/loss payee on the property coverage, additional insured on the liability coverage, and certificate holder for delivery of the certificate.

Where does the lender go on a commercial property insurance policy?

The lender is typically named in three places. As mortgagee and loss payee on the property coverage, which is what entitles the lender to be paid on a building loss. As additional insured on the liability coverage. And as certificate holder, so the lender receives the certificate of insurance. The property owner's entity — usually an LLC — is the named insured. A title company is generally a certificate holder only.

Why does the lease matter for commercial real estate insurance?

On a net-leased investment property, the lease governs the insurance. It determines whether the landlord or the tenant is obligated to carry property coverage, what liability limits are required, whether a waiver of subrogation is needed, and who must be named as an additional insured. The lease's annual base rent also sets the business income limit, since rent is the income a landlord loses if the building is damaged. For a single-tenant net lease deal, the lease is the single most important underwriting document.

Do commercial insurance brokers charge the investor a fee?

CRE Shield does not charge a broker fee. Compensation comes from a commission paid by the insurance carrier, built into the premium, which is standard in commercial insurance brokerage. Typical commercial property commissions range from roughly 10% to 15% of annual premium.

What documents are needed to quote insurance on a commercial property purchase?

The lease, the executed purchase agreement, the offering memorandum, and any insurance requirements from the lender. The lease is the most important. From those documents an underwriter can determine address, building square footage, year built, construction type, tenant, purchase price, closing date, annual base rent, and the required insurance terms.

Built for CRE investors — not everyone else

Insurance shouldn't be the thing that delays your closing.

Q: How fast can a commercial real estate investor get an insurance quote?

CRE Shield targets under 72 hours on a complete submission, and often faster on straightforward single-tenant net lease deals. Actual speed depends on the asset and carrier appetite — a vacant office building in a coastal wind zone will take longer than a net-leased retail pad. What a broker controls is how quickly the submission is built and how many carriers see it simultaneously.

CRE Shield is a national commercial insurance brokerage focused exclusively on commercial real estate investors. Upload your purchase contract. We handle the rest — carriers, quotes, lender requirements, certificates.

See how it works

No forms to retype. We read the PSA and OM for you.

Under 72 hrs

Target quote turnaround
on a complete submission

All 50 states

National carrier and
wholesale relationships

One contact

For your entire
portfolio

New acquisition

Insure a property you're buying

Start your quote

Drop your lease or purchase contract or browse your files Lease · PSA · Offering memorandum · Lender requirements
PDF, DOCX, XLSX — up to 25MB each

No documents handy? Start with just your property address →

We read your documents and build the submission — you don't retype a thing.

Own several?

Review your whole portfolio at once

Portfolio review

Upload your portfolio schedule or browse your files A single file listing every location with the basics — or the leases

Up to 25 properties. Send one file that lists every location with the basics — or the leases. We'll extract what we can and follow up on anything we're missing.

The problem

Most brokers understand businesses. Very few understand investment property.

You're 20 days from closing, the lender just sent an insurance requirements addendum, and your local agent has never placed a single-tenant net lease deal in another state. This is where deals slip.

What investors deal with today

The typical experience

Local brokers with limited commercial or investment-property expertise.
Difficulty placing coverage across multiple states as the portfolio grows.
Slow turnaround during due diligence — right when the clock matters most.
Twelve properties, twelve renewal dates, twelve separate conversations.
Insurance becomes one of the final items delaying the closing.

What CRE Shield does

The CRE Shield model

We only serve commercial real estate investors. That's the whole business.
National carrier and wholesale relationships — one broker for every state you buy in.
Upload the contract — we pull the underwriting data out of it ourselves.
Portfolio managed as one book, with common renewal dates wherever practical.
Certificates delivered straight to your lender and title company. On time.

How it works

Send us the contract. We'll take it from there.

You already assembled every document an underwriter needs during due diligence. You shouldn't have to retype it into a 40-field application.

Upload your documents

Purchase agreement, offering memorandum, lender insurance requirements. Whatever you have — even if it's incomplete.

We build the submission

We pull address, square footage, construction, year built, tenant, and price out of your documents, then fill the gaps.

Carriers compete

We approach multiple carriers and wholesalers simultaneously — not one at a time — and bring back real options.

Bind and close

You pick coverage. We bind it and deliver certificates directly to the lender and title company before closing.

After closing, your policy joins a single portfolio view — one renewal conversation a year, not twelve.

Who we serve

If you own it as an investment, we can place it.

Our ideal client is an active investor who buys again. We're built to grow with a portfolio, not to write a single policy and disappear.

Single-tenant net lease

QSR, auto parts, dollar stores, pharmacy, medical — the backbone of most investor portfolios.

Retail centers

Strip centers, neighborhood retail, multi-tenant pads with shared-area exposure.

Industrial & flex

Warehouse, light manufacturing, distribution, flex space and small-bay industrial.

Medical office

Single and multi-tenant MOB, dental, urgent care, ambulatory surgical.

Office

Suburban office, professional buildings, owner-user and investor-held office assets.

Self-storage

Climate-controlled and drive-up facilities, including multi-site operators.

Small portfolios

3 to 30 assets across multiple states, consolidated under one broker and one renewal cycle.

1031 exchanges

Tight identification and closing windows. We work on exchange timelines, not agency timelines.

After the close

Most brokers go quiet the day the policy binds.

Ask any investor with a real portfolio. The renewal shows up unannounced. A payment gets missed and nobody calls. And the policies arrive as a list of numbers with no indication of which property they cover or which entity owns it.

At three properties that's a nuisance. At twenty it's a real risk — and at a hundred it's unmanageable. Coverage lapses aren't usually the result of a bad decision. They're the result of nobody watching.

Renewals, in advance. You hear from us before the renewal, not after it processes.
Missed payments get a phone call. Not a lapse notice six weeks later.
Organized by property and entity. Not by policy number. You should never have to reverse-engineer which LLC owns which policy.

Your portfolio 3 of 14 shown

Property	Entity	Renewal	Status
1240 W KelloggWichita, KS · Advance Auto	Kellogg Retail LLC	Mar 1in 232 days	Paid · Active
8817 Metcalf AveOverland Park, KS · Multi-tenant	Metcalf Holdings LLC	Mar 1in 232 days	Payment due in 9 days
402 Industrial PkwySpringfield, MO · Warehouse	Knox Industrial II LLC	Mar 1in 232 days	Paid · Active

Renewals aligned to a common date wherever the carriers allow it — one conversation a year instead of fourteen.

Why CRE Shield

We're not a general agency that also does real estate.

Built into the acquisition

We come from the deal side. We know what a lender's insurance addendum actually requires, what title needs, and what the closing timeline really is — because we've lived it.

National by default

Your next deal might be in Kansas, Texas, or Ohio. Carrier and wholesale relationships are built so a new state is a non-event, not a three-week search for a local agent.

One contact, one portfolio

Every property you own sits in a single portfolio view with one point of contact. Common renewal dates wherever practical. No re-explaining your business every year.

Fast on purpose

Multiple carriers approached simultaneously, not sequentially. Underwriting data pulled from documents you already have. Speed is a design decision, not a promise.

Certificates, handled

Certificate requests, lender COIs, additional insured and mortgagee endorsements — requested in the portal, delivered where they need to go.

We grow when you grow

The model only works if you buy again. That aligns us with your portfolio in a way a transactional agency never will.

Plain english

Who goes where on the policy — and why it keeps failing.

Additional insured, certificate holder, mortgagee, named insured. These get used interchangeably, and they are not interchangeable. Getting this wrong is the most common reason a policy bounces back from a lender's insurance review three days before closing.

Named insured

The entity that owns it

Your LLC. The party the policy actually covers. If the building burns, this is who the carrier pays.

Usually: your acquisition entity

Mortgagee / loss payee

The lender's claim on the building

Sits on the property side of the policy. This is the clause that entitles the lender to be paid on a building loss. It's the first thing a lender's insurance reviewer looks for.

Usually: your lender

Additional insured

Extends your liability coverage

Sits on the liability side. Gives that party actual coverage rights under your policy. Lenders typically require it; leases often require it between landlord and tenant.

Usually: your lender, and per the lease

Certificate holder

Receives paper. Nothing more.

A certificate holder just gets a copy of the COI. It grants zero coverage rights. Naming your lender as a certificate holder and stopping there is the classic failure — the lender has evidence of a policy that gives them nothing.

Usually: title company — and the lender, in addition to the roles above

The rule of thumb: on a financed deal, your lender is normally all three — mortgagee/loss payee, additional insured, and certificate holder. Your title company is normally certificate holder only. Your entity is the named insured. We pull these parties straight out of your loan documents and lease, assign the roles, and flag anything that would fail review — before it does.

Questions

Straight answers.

Our target is under 72 hours on a complete submission, and often faster on straightforward single-tenant deals. The honest answer is that speed depends on the asset and the carrier appetite — a vacant office building in a coastal wind zone is not a 48-hour quote. What we control is how fast the submission gets built and how many carriers see it at once, and that's where most brokers lose a week.

The lease, the executed purchase agreement, the offering memorandum, and any insurance requirements from your lender. The lease matters most — on a net lease deal it decides who carries property coverage, what limits are required, and what your business income limit should be. If you only have one of those documents, send it anyway. We'll tell you exactly what's missing rather than making you guess.

On a net-leased property, the lease governs the insurance. It determines whether you or the tenant is obligated to carry property coverage, what liability limits are required, whether a waiver of subrogation is needed, and who has to be named as an additional insured. The annual base rent in the lease also sets your business income limit — because rent is exactly what you lose if the building is damaged. A broker who quotes your deal without reading the lease is guessing.

An additional insured actually receives coverage rights under your liability policy. A certificate holder just receives a copy of the certificate — it grants no coverage rights at all. This trips up a lot of deals: people name the lender as a certificate holder, the lender's insurance reviewer sees they have no real interest in the policy, and the file bounces back days before closing. Your lender normally needs to be all three — mortgagee/loss payee on the property side, additional insured on the liability side, and certificate holder so they get the paperwork. Full breakdown here.

This is where most brokers disappear, and it's the part we care most about. You get renewal notice ahead of the renewal, not after it processes. If a payment is missed, you get a phone call — not a lapse notice weeks later. And your policies are organized by property and by owning entity, so you never have to work backwards from a policy number to figure out which LLC owns which building. If you own twenty properties, that organization is the service.

No. We're compensated by the insurance carrier through a commission built into the premium, which is standard for commercial brokerage. You pay the premium; we don't add a broker fee on top of it.

Yes — that's a core reason the business exists. We're resident-licensed in Kansas and actively adding licenses in additional states, and we work with wholesale brokers for harder-to-place assets and catastrophe-exposed geographies.

Maybe not, and we'll tell you if it isn't. But if you own several properties with staggered renewals and separate agents, there's usually meaningful savings and a lot less administrative friction in consolidating. We'll review your current policies and give you a straight read — including if the answer is "keep what you have."

They're used to build your insurance submission and shared only with the carriers and wholesalers we approach on your behalf. Purchase agreements and offering memorandums are confidential deal documents and we treat them that way.