Most real estate owners treat insurance like a tax — money you light on fire every year and hope you never need. Nicolas “Nico” Lares built a company that hands it back.
In this episode of Carson's Corner, Nico breaks down the model behind Insur3Tech: “real estate insurance, syndicated.” Instead of paying premiums to a carrier whose shareholders are somebody else, owners join a group cell captive where the customers are the shareholders. Whatever's left after claims and expenses gets distributed back pro rata — the same structure as an LP syndication, except the asset is an insurance company. He's reporting a roughly 20% average decrease in insurance costs, over a million doors insured, and a projected ~32% return to members this year.
Carson and Nico get into the mechanics most owners never see: why there's no minimum premium to join a group cell, why the sweet spot is $10–20M TIV per property instead of trophy high-rises, how reinsurance means a bad year costs members nothing extra, and how insurance companies actually make money — underwriting spread plus float. Nico also explains how he learned this world building a captive for Amazon's logistics network when traditional carriers walked away, and how the same playbook now runs across multifamily, self-storage, industrial, IOS, retail, triple net, and single-family rentals — including resident renters policies and tenant GL written into the lease.
They also cover the part that makes the model work: incentives. When your profit distribution depends on the group's claims, you stop filing nuisance claims and you only refer operators you'd trust with your own money. It's why Insur3Tech doesn't buy stadium naming rights — and why the referrals it gets are better than the leads it would.
Whether you own five units or five thousand, if insurance is eating your NOI, this one's worth the 40 minutes.
Topics covered: real estate insurance, group cell captives, captive insurance for property owners, reinsurance, multifamily insurance costs, self-storage and industrial insurance, IOS, triple net and retail, single-family rental portfolios, resident renters policies, tenant general liability, and lowering insurance expense to protect NOI.
Connect with Nico: insur3tech.com | [email protected] | Find him on LinkedIn
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