ZestyAI's models will immediately empower the Berkshire Hathaway group of insurance companies with precise risk scores underpinned by more than 200 billion data points and decades of historical loss data
Jul 13, 2021 | 3 min Read
OAKLAND, CALIF., July 13, 2021: Today The Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies (BHHC) has chosen ZestyAI, a leader in climate risk analytics powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), to enhance its current understanding of climate risk for commercial properties at the individual property level. BHHC encompasses six insurance carriers that are part of the Berkshire Hathaway group of insurance companies, and through this relationship it gains immediate access to ZestyAI’s climate risk solutions to enhance their underwriting processes.
Other Berkshire Hathaway Inc. insurance affiliates will also experiment with this promising tool to evaluate for future use in their property business as well.
Insurance losses from secondary perils including wildfires, severe convective storms, and floods have been increasing in frequency and severity, resulting in $97 billion in insured losses in 2020 alone. Losses from these events are now outpacing losses from primary perils like hurricanes and earthquakes. The insurance industry has adopted more sophisticated models for primary perils while models to understand risk posed by secondary perils are still very nascent. BHHC’s partnership with ZestyAI offers the company access to assessment of secondary perils that leverage cutting-edge technologies like AI and computer vision.
“As a leading commercial property insurer, we are deeply committed to leveraging the latest technologies to ensure we are accurately pricing the risk to our customers from natural disasters,” said Brian Hall, Vice President - Products and Underwriting at Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies. “We’ve been evaluating ZestyAI’s climate risk solutions for over two years and have found them to be valuable in enhancing our current underwriting process.”
ZestyAI uses more than 200 billion data points, including aerial imagery, weather, and real estate data, to generate property-specific risk scores for both personal and commercial lines business. Combining property insights, such as roof pitch, building height, parcel slope, and more with ZestyAI’s proprietary database of actual loss data has allowed the company to build the next generation of predictive climate risk models, including Z-FIRE - an AI model trained on more than 1,400 wildfire events and more than 20 years of historical loss data. Unlike legacy models, Z-FIRE accounts for the property-level factors that contribute to wildfire risk including building materials, historical weather data, and factors extracted from aerial imagery like vegetation, and then combines these details to derive a property-specific predictive risk score.
“The Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies have a longstanding reputation for being innovators in the industry, and we’re honored to work with them to enhance their ability to accurately assess climate risk,” said Attila Toth, Founder & CEO of ZestyAI. “Their understanding of commercial property insurance combined with our AI-powered climate risk analytics will drive substantial value for their customers while giving BHHC a true edge in risk selection.”
For more information on ZestyAI and its climate risk solutions please visit www.zesty.ai. For more information on BHHC please visit www.bhhc.com.
About ZestyAI
Increasingly frequent natural disasters have impacted communities and drove $2.2 Trillion in economic losses over the past decade. ZestyAI uses 200Bn data points, including aerial imagery, and artificial intelligence to assess the impact of climate change one building at a time. ZestyAI has partnered with leading insurance companies and property owners to help them protect homes, businesses and support thriving communities. ZestyAI was named Top 100 Most Innovative AI Company in the world by CB Insights in2020, and Gartner Cool Vendor in Insurance by Gartner Research in 2019. For more information visit: https://www.zesty.ai/.
About Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies
The Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies (BHHC) are a group of six insurance carriers that are part of the Berkshire Hathaway insurance group. Headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, and with more than 50 years in business, BHHC has evolved from a regional carrier to a national insurance group writing a diverse book of policies from coast to coast. Its Workers’ Compensation Division is based in San Francisco, California.
The Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies are Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Insurance Company, Brookwood Insurance Company, Continental Divide Insurance Company, Cypress Insurance Company, Oak River Insurance Company, and Redwood Fire and Casualty Insurance Company. Visit www.bhhc.com.