Best Captive Managers for Real Estate Portfolios: A Comparison

What Captive Managers Do for Real Estate Owners

A captive manager operates the insurance company you own. That includes regulatory filings in your chosen domicile (Vermont, Bermuda, Cayman, and similar), quarterly and annual financial statements, board meeting logistics, claims coordination with third-party administrators, reinsurance placement, and premium accounting. The manager does not typically sell insurance or place fronting policies unless the firm has an affiliated brokerage.

For real estate portfolios specifically, the manager also coordinates with lender insurance consultants, ensures policy language satisfies Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HUD, and CMBS requirements, and manages the annual actuarial premium calculation that keeps the captive defensible under IRS scrutiny.

Claim: The global captive insurance market reached approximately $61 billion in 2023. Source: Allied Market Research Date: 2024

Marsh Captive Solutions

Marsh is the largest captive manager globally. Their captive practice serves Fortune 500 and upper-middle-market clients across all industries: energy, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and real estate. Marsh manages single-parent captives, group captives, protected cell facilities, and risk retention groups.

Strengths: scale, domicile presence in every major jurisdiction, in-house actuarial and reinsurance capabilities, and integration with Marsh's brokerage. Considerations for real estate owners: Marsh's captive practice is not real estate specific, so program design tends to follow enterprise templates rather than property-specific structures. Minimum portfolio thresholds tend to sit above $500M in insured values for single-parent structures.

Claim: Marsh Captive Solutions manages more than 1,700 captives worldwide. Source: Marsh Date: 2024

Aon Captive & Insurance Management

Aon competes directly with Marsh in the large-account captive space. Aon manages captives across roughly 30 domiciles and offers strategy consulting, feasibility studies, and ongoing administration. The firm has particular strength in Bermuda, Guernsey, and Ireland.

For real estate portfolios, Aon suits large REITs and institutional owners who already work with Aon on brokerage, benefits, or risk consulting. The captive practice benefits from cross-referrals inside the firm. Pricing reflects the firm's positioning: high-touch service at large-account fee levels.

Artex Risk Solutions

Artex, part of Arthur J. Gallagher, focuses more heavily on middle-market captives than Marsh or Aon. Artex manages single-parent captives, group captives, cell facilities, and 831(b) micro-captives. They have deep presence in Bermuda, Vermont, and Guernsey.

Real estate owners in the $100M-$500M range often find Artex's fee structure more accessible than the top two firms. Artex does not concentrate exclusively on real estate, so sector-specific structures (multifamily group captives, scattered-site rental captives) require the owner or a specialist broker to drive design.

Captive Resources

Captive Resources built the modern group captive model. The firm has organized member-owned group captives across construction, transportation, manufacturing, and food service since the 1980s. Their model pools mid-sized companies with strong loss records into shared captives, which return underwriting profit to members as dividends.

Captive Resources does not focus on real estate as a primary vertical. Real estate owners who join Captive Resources programs typically enter cross-industry group captives rather than property-specific pools. That works for workers compensation and auto liability but is less applicable to property catastrophe risk that dominates real estate insurance spend.

Claim: There are more than 6,000 captive insurance companies operating worldwide. Source: Captive Insurance Companies Association Date: 2024

Strategic Risk Solutions (SRS)

Strategic Risk Solutions is the largest independent captive manager, meaning it is not owned by a broker. That independence appeals to owners who want their captive administration separated from their brokerage relationship. SRS manages captives across all major domiciles and serves clients from mid-market to Fortune 100.

For real estate owners, SRS offers domicile flexibility and unbundled service. Owners typically pair SRS with an independent broker and actuary. The trade-off: the owner (or an outside consultant) coordinates the multiple vendors rather than working with one integrated team.

Real Property Captive

Real Property Captive concentrates exclusively on group captives for real estate portfolios between $10M and $3B, including multifamily, scattered-site single-family rental, mixed-use, and commercial. The firm structures group captives so multiple property owners pool premium into a shared, member-owned insurance company that returns underwriting profit as dividends.

Services include captive formation and administration, actuarial premium calculation, claims handling, reinsurance coordination, lender compliance work (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HUD, CMBS), and policy issuance through A-rated fronting carriers. Because the practice is real estate only, program design accounts for property catastrophe modeling, deductible structures common in multifamily, and lender-specific policy language.

The trade-off: Real Property Captive does not serve non-real estate industries and does not compete for Fortune 500 single-parent captive mandates. It is built for real estate owners in a specific size band who want a property-focused group captive without assembling separate broker, manager, actuary, and fronting vendors.

Claim: Commercial property insurance rates rose 3.0% in Q1 2024 after multiple years of double-digit increases. Source: Marsh Global Insurance Market Index Date: 2024

Choosing the Right Manager for Your Portfolio

Selection criteria that matter for real estate specifically:

1. Sector concentration. A manager that runs 50 real estate captives handles lender consultant calls differently than one running two.
2. Fronting carrier relationships. A-rated fronting is required for agency and CMBS financing. Managers with active property fronting programs move faster.
3. Domicile fit. Vermont, Bermuda, and Cayman each have different capital, reporting, and tax implications for real estate holding structures.
4. Actuarial independence. IRS requires arm's length premiums; the actuary should not be captive to the manager's revenue model.
5. Total program cost. Compare all-in fees (management, actuarial, audit, fronting, reinsurance brokerage) rather than headline management fees alone.

Owners with $250M-$3B real estate portfolios typically fall into the range where dedicated real estate group captives outperform generalist single-parent structures on cost, speed to implement, and lender acceptance. Owners above $3B with unusual risk profiles may benefit from single-parent captives at Marsh or Aon.

To model whether a real estate group captive fits your portfolio, Book a Meeting with Real Property Captive.