About CRE Shield
CRE Shield LLC is a licensed insurance agency for owners of single-tenant commercial property, started by an owner who got tired of the paperwork. I am Brad Cottam. For 16 years I have been a principal and investor in single-tenant commercial real estate, and insurance has been part of it the whole way.
Why we started
Over those years we worked with a number of insurance brokers. Most of them overpromised and underdelivered. We nearly always ended up with a policy, sometimes at the last minute, sometimes after a struggle, and often with coverage added that we did not need.
Our real problem was administration. Our brokers rarely watched our renewal dates, and we missed some. And once we owned a portfolio, every broker put our properties on master policies. We buy properties throughout the year, not all on one date, so the properties did not line up on one renewal, and prorating the insurance for each property to bill our tenants back became a nightmare. Every broker promised to make it clean, and they tried hard at first. Over time the help faded. We always got it done, but it wasted a lot of time.
So we opened our own agency to fix it for ourselves. Fixing it for us turned out to fix it for other owners too.
How we work
- Nearly touchless. You send the base documents: the lease, your current policy, and the purchase documents if you are buying. We use software and AI to read them and pull out everything we can. We come back to you only with the essential questions we cannot answer ourselves.
- Billing built in. Every property gets its own cost, even when it sits on a portfolio policy, and the cost is prorated for buildings added during the year. That makes tenant reimbursements straightforward instead of a yearly rebuild. See how to bill a tenant for property insurance and how to allocate a premium across properties.
- We watch the calendar. Renewal dates are tracked, and a renewal starts early, so you are not the one watching for it.
- Straight talk about where your business goes. Insurance companies pay agencies, and carriers reward agencies for volume. In my own experience, our previous brokers placed 80 to 90 percent of our business with a single carrier, and I came to believe that was driven by what that carrier paid, not by what was best for us. Like any agency, we have minimum volume commitments with carriers to keep our appointments. But we choose the market that fits your building, and we will tell you which carriers we approached and why we recommend the one we do.
We built CRE Shield to solve our own problem first. If it makes the same problem easier for other owners, that is the point.
Start with our complete guide to single-tenant property insurance, or browse the glossary.
Licensing
CRE Shield LLC is resident-licensed in Kansas (License No. 3004374608) and licensed in Texas (License No. 3549616). National Producer Number (NPN) 22316211. Brad Cottam is a licensed property and casualty agent in Kansas and Texas. We transact insurance business only in states where we hold an active license, and we are adding states. If your property is in a state where we are not yet licensed, we will tell you plainly.
Compensation is carrier-paid commission. We do not charge the owner a broker fee.
Contact
Email brad@creshield.com.
This page is general information and not an offer of coverage. Coverage is subject to the terms, conditions and exclusions of the policy actually issued.