Shareholders, not unit owners. The insurance structure has to match how the co-op actually holds title.

A co-op's insurable interest runs through the corporation, which owns the entire building and grants proprietary leases to shareholders. Placing coverage as if shareholders individually owned their units, the condo model, creates confusion at claim time over who is responsible for interior finishes, fixtures, and improvements inside a unit.

We structure the master policy around the corporation's actual ownership of the building and the proprietary lease's allocation of responsibility, not a condo template.

We read the proprietary lease's maintenance and improvement-responsibility language and structure the master policy to match it, so a claim inside a shareholder's unit resolves against the lease's actual terms.

Shareholders routinely finance kitchen, bathroom, and flooring improvements inside their units. Whether those improvements are covered under the corporation's blanket policy or the shareholder's own coverage depends on the proprietary lease's specific language, and many co-ops have never confirmed which applies.

We document that allocation clearly and confirm the corporation's coverage and any recommended shareholder coverage line up without a gap or an overlap.

We document, in writing, which improvements the corporation's blanket policy covers and which fall to shareholder coverage, based on the proprietary lease, so the allocation is settled before a claim, not during one.

A co-op board does not just administer common areas. It governs a corporation that owns the building, approves or rejects share transfers, sets house rules, and makes admissions decisions on prospective shareholders. Those admission and transfer decisions are a distinct exposure that a generic association directors and officers form, drafted for a deed-based HOA, often does not contemplate. A wrongful-rejection or discrimination allegation against the board is defended and paid under D&O, and a thin or association-templated form can leave the corporation and its volunteer directors exposed on exactly the decisions a co-op board makes most often.

Limits set to a small association's exposure also tend to be too low for a corporation that holds title to the entire building and carries an underlying mortgage. Defense costs on an employment or admissions claim erode a modest limit quickly, and unlike the commercial general liability defense that sits outside the limit, D&O defense usually erodes the policy limit itself.

We place D&O written for the co-op corporation's actual decisions, admissions, share-transfer approvals, house-rule enforcement, and employment of building staff, with limits sized to the corporation's balance sheet rather than a small-association default. Typical mid-size co-op limits run in the $1M-$5M range depending on unit count, staff, and the underlying loan, and we confirm whether defense erodes the limit so the board knows what a contested claim actually leaves in reserve. These are illustrative ranges, not a quote for any specific corporation.

Most co-op corporations carry a single building-wide underlying mortgage, and the lender on that loan imposes master-policy requirements the same way a condo's secondary-market lenders do. Fannie Mae's Selling Guide sets these out: a general liability floor of $1M per occurrence under its liability requirement (B7-4-01) and a fidelity or crime bond covering the corporation's funds (B7-4-02). A co-op that has never reconciled its master policy against the underlying lender's letter can find a renewal quietly out of compliance, which becomes a problem at the corporation's own refinance and at every individual share-loan a shareholder tries to close.

The fidelity exposure is larger for a co-op than for many condos, because the corporation collects maintenance, holds reserves, and services the underlying loan through the managing agent. A crime or fidelity limit set years ago against a smaller balance can fall well short of the funds actually passing through the corporation and its agent today.

We map the master policy against the corporation's underlying-mortgage lender requirements and the recurring share-loan requirements shareholders' lenders impose, so both the corporate refinance and individual share-loan closings clear without a last-minute coverage scramble. That includes confirming the $1M general liability floor, sizing the fidelity or crime bond to the funds and reserves the corporation and its managing agent actually handle, and documenting the deductible-assessment exposure, where the standard community-association form's assessment coverage for a master-policy deductible carries a $1,000 sublimit that rarely matches a real building deductible.