Minnesota and Maryland Approve ZestyAI’s Z-WATER™, Now Accepted for Rating and Underwriting in 22 States

ZestyAI today announced that regulators in Minnesota and Maryland have accepted Z-WATER™, its AI-powered non-weather water risk model, for use in carrier rate and rule filings. The new approvals build on Z-WATER's growing regulatory acceptance across more than 20 states, expanding opportunities for insurers to incorporate property-level risk insights into their rating strategies.

Non-weather water has become the fourth-costliest peril in homeowners insurance, accounting for more than $15 billion in annual losses across more than one million claims. Unlike weather-related catastrophes, these losses often stem from everyday incidents such as burst pipes, plumbing deterioration, and appliance failures. Yet traditional rating approaches, which rely heavily on geographic territories and property age, offer limited insight into which individual homes are most susceptible to these losses.

Z-WATER addresses this challenge by combining computer vision, aerial imagery, property characteristics, permitting history, localized climatology, and infrastructure context to predict the frequency and severity of non-weather water claims. Trained and validated using insurer loss data, Z-WATER delivers 18x risk segmentation lift compared with traditional territory- and age-based approaches, enabling insurers to more accurately differentiate risk across their portfolios.

"The continued expansion of Z-WATER's regulatory footprint reflects growing recognition that non-weather water risk can be assessed with far greater precision than traditional methods allow," said Bryan Rehor, Senior Director of Regulatory and Government Affairs at ZestyAI.

"With each new approval, more carriers have a pathway to incorporate property-level insights into their rating strategies, helping them better distinguish risk across the homes they insure."

The latest Z-WATER approvals build on ZestyAI's broader regulatory momentum. In September, the company surpassed 500 regulatory approvals across 317 carrier rate and rule filings in 44 states, spanning models for wildfire, severe storms, hail, wind, non-weather fire, non-weather water, and property intelligence.

With each additional approval, ZestyAI continues to expand the regulatory foundation for property-level risk assessment, giving insurers more opportunities to align pricing with the characteristics and exposures of individual structures.