DUAL North America Expands Partnership with ZestyAI to Power Wildfire Underwriting in California

ZestyAI today announced that DUAL North America(“DUAL”) is expanding its partnership with ZestyAI to power wildfire underwriting for a new California homeowners program. As part of this expansion, DUAL will use Z-FIRE™ to assess wildfire exposure at the property level and support disciplined growth in catastrophe-exposed regions.

California continues to present significant wildfire volatility, requiring insurers to move beyond broad geographic indicators toward more granular, property-specific insights. Z-FIRE uses machine learning to evaluate each property’s unique characteristics—including defensible space, vegetation proximity, topography, building materials, and surrounding fire behavior patterns—to predict wildfire vulnerability at the individual structure level. 

This property-level insight helps insurers identify structures most likely to suffer catastrophic loss, and those far more likely to survive a wildfire event.

“Launching a California program requires a disciplined, data-driven approach to wildfire risk,” said Luke Wolmer, Chief Actuary at DUAL.

“Z-FIRE delivers the property-level insight we need to confidently assess exposure, differentiate risk within the same territory, and offer coverage with greater clarity and consistency. That level of precision is essential as we grow our portfolio with greater confidence.”

This expansion builds on DUAL’s late-2025 adoption of Z-STORM™ to strengthen hail and wind underwriting across its U.S. portfolio, marking a rapid expansion of its use of the ZestyAI platform.

“After strengthening severe storm underwriting with Z-STORM, DUAL is now extending that strategy to wildfire with Z-FIRE.” said Attila Toth, Founder and CEO of ZestyAI.

“This expansion shows how insurers can grow responsibly in challenging markets when decisions are grounded in verified, property-level intelligence.”

Z-FIRE is approved across Western wildfire markets and was the first AI-based wildfire model approved as part of a carrier rate filing in California. ZestyAI’s broader portfolio of risk models has secured more than 200 regulatory approvals nationwide.