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Research

ZestyAI Publishes Data-Driven Look at 2022 Wildfire Season

2022 Wildfire Season Overview looks back at 2021 and ahead to what may be a long year of wildfires in 2022.

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Today, ZestyAI released its 2022 Wildfire Season Overview. Each year, ZestyAI prepares a comprehensive overview to help guide insurers based on recent wildfire events, persistent drought conditions, and advancements in artificial intelligence for managing wildfire risk.

If it seems like wildfires are burning at all times of the year, it's not just you. Very destructive events, like last December's Marshall Fire, are occurring in months not typically associated with high wildfire danger. Those who study wildfires, including ZestyAI, have begun to start thinking in wildfire "years" instead of wildfire "seasons'. Strong wildfire years, with 10+ million acres burned, have quickly become the new normal. The last 10 years have been the worst on record for property and casualty (P&C) insurers when it comes to wildfire. 8 of the top 20 fires in California history, and more than half of the acreage burned by them, occurred in just the years 2020 and 2021.

What can insurers do to prepare themselves for persistent wildfires?

  • Understand the Data: Instead of sticking with decades-old approaches, assess wildfire risk at the property level.
  • Continue to Bring Transparency and Education to Homeowners: Insights from AI-based wildfire risk models may be passed on to homeowners and agents, enabling a much better understanding of wildfire risk.
  • Find the Right Technology Partner: Aerial and satellite imagery, machine learning, and infinitely scalable cloud computing resources were combined to build the most granular wildfire risk assessment model (Z-FIRE™). Using Z-FIRE™, ZestyAI can accurately estimate an individual property’s wildfire risk, plus highlight the key property-level factors that contribute to that risk.

Click here to download ZestyAI's 2022 Wildfire Season Overview.

ZestyAI offers insurers and real estate companies access to precise intelligence about every property in North America. The company uses AI, including computer vision, to build a digital twin for every building in North America, encompassing 200B property insights accounting for all details that could impact a property’s value and associated risks, including the potential impact of natural disasters. Visit https://zesty.ai for more information.

Research

The 2021 Wildfire Season has Devastating Potential

A Data-Driven Conversation about the US West’s Megadrought

Current climate conditions in the West reveal that 2021 may have a higher than normal risk for wildfire losses. While much of this report focuses on California, historically the worst victim of wildfire in the US, the entire western US is of concern in 2021. In particular, the expansion of deep drought into Colorado is of major concern.

Drought is a leading factor in seasonal wildfire risk. With drought extending through every western state this spring, insurers should consider looking deeply into how they are addressing this growing peril. According to AON, last year’s wildfires in the US West cost insurers over $8 billion.

We've released a complete detailing the devastating potential for 2021's wildfire season. The full report is available here.

 

Research

Nearly Doubling a Property’s Wildfire Survival Rate: New Study from ZestyAI in Collaboration with IBHS Shows Impact of Key Mitigation Action

Research across more than 71,000 properties involved in wildfires draws significant links between fuel management and property survival.


 

Read Full Study 

Oakland,Calif., April 8, 2021: ZestyAI, a leader in climate risk analytics powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) today released new research on how fuel management impacts destruction rates from wildfires. They found property owners who clear vegetation from the perimeter of their home or building can nearly double their structure's likelihood of surviving a wildfire.

ZestyAI, in conjunction with, IBHS studied more than 71,000 properties involved in wildfires between 2016 and 2019 to assess the relationship between vegetation, buildings, and property vulnerability. To do this, ZestyAI leveraged a combination of computer vision and AI to analyze high resolution satellite and aerial imagery of the properties that fell within the wildfire perimeter, which allowed them to determine what effects a property's physical environment had on its likelihood of survival. They found buildings with a high amount of vegetation within 5 feet of the structure were destroyed in a wildfire 78 percent of the time -- a rate nearly twice as high as those with small amounts of perimeter vegetation. This pattern held true as ZestyAI analyzed the other defensible zones, ranging from 30 to 100 feet around the property.

"It's common sense that increased vegetation increases wildfire risk, but this study shows just how powerful individual action can be in safeguarding structures. Mitigation actions that can cut risk nearly in half are statistically meaningful to anyone with a stake in this peril," said Attila Toth, CEO of ZestyAI. "These findings also underscore how wildfire research at IBHS and artificial intelligence at ZestyAI translates to real-world impact at the intersection of homeowners, community leaders, regulators, and insurance carriers. This type of collective action will help protect our communities from the devastating impact of wildfire, which unfortunately has continued to increase over the last decade."

The study also supported and confirmed takeaways from IBHS's Suburban Wildfire Adaptation Roadmaps released last year, which go beyond the home ignition zone to detail additional actions needed across eight aspects of a home to address a home's wildfire vulnerability. ZestyAI's new research found that having other structures in close proximity to a property increases its wildfire risk, particularly for properties in areas with moderate to high vegetation coverage. Buildings in these areas that had another structure within 30 to 100 feet from the property were destroyed in a wildfire 60 percent of the time, compared to a 31 percent destruction rate for homes without another structure in close proximity.

"This research further demonstrates to homeowners, community leaders, and policy makers just how impactful taking the mitigation actions laid out in the Suburban Wildfire Adaptation Roadmaps can be in protecting homes from wildfire ignition," said Roy E. Wright, President & Chief Executive Officer at IBHS. "Quantifying the effect of mitigating fuel density risk, one of the critical actions identified in the Roadmaps, is a first piece in the larger puzzle of what groups of mitigation actions most improve the chance of home survival and by what level."

ZestyAI is uniquely equipped to support this type of research because of the proprietary wildfire property loss database it developed for Z-FIRE™, its AI model that generates property-specific predictive risk scores. Z-FIRE™ has been trained on more than 1,200 wildfire events across several decades and accounts for the property-level factors that contribute to wildfire risk, including defensible space, building material, and roof pitch, which legacy models fail to consider.

Wright added, "While it is not possible to eliminate wildfire risk we are not powerless against it. We must take a pragmatic approach to mitigate risk at all levels and ultimately reduce property damage through data and science. Through collaborations with modelling organizations like ZestyAI, advanced technology like computer vision and AI help us better understand the impact of these actions at a larger scale. It is encouraging to see emerging progress in just the first months of 2021."

For additional insights you can read the full research paper, ‘Wildfire Fuel Management and Risk Mitigation - Where to Start?' here. For more information on ZestyAI please visit www.zesty.ai, and for more information on IBHS please visit www.ibhs.org.

About ZestyAI (www.zesty.ai): Increasingly frequent natural disasters, such as wildfires, floods and hurricanes devastated 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 helping them protect homes, businesses and support thriving communities. ZestyAI was named Top 100 Most Innovative AI Company in the world by CB Insights in 2020, and Gartner Cool Vendor in Insurance by Gartner Research in 2019. For more information visit: https://www.zesty.ai/

About the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS)

The IBHS mission is to conduct objective, scientific research to identify and promote effective actions that strengthen homes, businesses and communities against natural disasters and other causes of loss. Learn more about IBHS at DisasterSafety.org.

Research

ZestyAI Research: Up to $9.8Bn in Losses Already Caused by Wildfires in 2020

As of September 18th, between $5.9Bn and $9.8Bn in losses have occurred this year alone.

The Zest
ZestyAI has been keeping a close eye on the wildfires burning in the Western United States. Whether by evacuation or smoke, most of our employees have felt the impact firsthand.
Utilizing our vast wildfire data and artificial intelligence resources, we have estimated that as of September 18th, between $5.9Bn and $9.8Bn in losses have occurred this year alone.

What has made 2020 unique?
Two key aspects have made the 2020 Wildfire Season exceptional: the number of acres burned and the timing of the fires.

2018, which previously held the California record for acres burned at 1,975,086 has been eclipsed with months left in the seasons. More than 3.3 million acres have already been charred by wildfire this year in California alone, and more than 5 million in the Western US.

Fire season tends to start in September and peak in November. In August, a large scale lightning event occurred, triggering many of the California wildfires. Oregon, which typically has a shorter wildfire season has also seen early and widespread wildfires.

Analysis Methodology
Using ZestyAI’s comprehensive historical wildfire loss data, up-to-date wildfire perimeter locations for the 2020 season, residential and commercial property information, and fueled by ZestyAI’s AI-driven wildfire damage risk scores, the expected destruction and cost of the 2020 wildfire season so far was calculated for California, Oregon, and Washington.

To estimate the destruction and damages, ZestyAI identified every structure involved in the 2020 wildfire perimeters and their associated wildfire vulnerabilities. Using the historical relationship between the risk profile of the structure, asset value, and economic loss, ZestyAI was able to estimate the full economic loss of those events (including non-insured assets such as uninsured property, and non-insured economic cost). Actual information from CalFire on CZU and LNU incident was used to validate the methodology.

From our extensive historical loss data, a relationship between structural damage expected and the cost of wildfire events was developed based on local property and loss information and expanded to include additional considerations such as smoke damage, displacement costs, and construction.

The 5 Most Destructive Fires So Far
Our estimates place the Claremont-Bear (North Complex) at the top of the list of most destructive in terms of number of properties lost. Four of these five wildfires occurred in California with the Alameda Drive fire occurring in Oregon.

The 5 Most Expensive Fires So Far
While the Claremont-Bear (North Complex) fire is estimated to have destroyed the most properties, the CZU Lightning Complex fire is currently estimated to be the most costly at up to $2.6B. That makes it responsible for ~27% of all total economic losses from fires in the 2020 season so far. 

Putting Numbers on Destruction
By ZestyAI estimates, between $5.9Bn and $9.8Bn of economic losses have occurred in California, Oregon, and Washington so far this year. California, which also leads in acres burned (5M+) makes up the lion’s share at up to $7.9B.

It’s important to state that the fire season is not yet over. In much of the Western US, it could be just beginning. With a number of fires still active and the potential for more to start, these numbers are almost certain to rise between now and the end of the year.

Looking Forward
Multiple estimates place the 2018 wildfire season at around $15Bn in total losses. While exceptional in terms of total acres burned, the 2020 wildfire season has not yet reached that level of economic loss. Without any doubt, this will be one of the costliest years on record, and with months left in the season, the potential exists for this year to surpass 2018 if it continues at its current pace.

ZestyAI will continue to monitor this fire season. As in years past, new data continues to refine our models and analyses. Insurance professionals and media who would like more information about this analysis or about how artificial intelligence can help insurers protect themselves and their customers from wildfire should contact us.

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Blog

2024 in Review

As we close out 2024, we’re taking a moment to reflect on a year defined by deeper partnerships, relentless innovation, and measurable progress in the insurance industry.

Watch the video message from our CEO, Attila Toth, to learn more about the milestones we achieved and what’s next for ZestyAI.

Strengthening Relationships

This year, we deepened our collaborations with existing partners and welcomed new customers across the country. Nearly half of the top 100 insurance carriers now trust ZestyAI to deliver precise, AI-driven insights that enhance underwriting, streamline operations, and address emerging risks in high-peril areas.

Innovation That Delivers Value

At ZestyAI, innovation is never just for its own sake—it’s about delivering actionable value that solves real-world challenges. In 2024, we launched:

  • Z-WATER™: Our new model that predicts non-weather-related water damage claims, helping carriers identify and mitigate this growing risk.
  • Roof Age: Leveraging historical imagery and building permit data to provide accurate roof condition insights for better underwriting and risk management.

We also delivered substantial enhancements to Z-PROPERTY™, our leading property insights platform:

  • Increased Coverage and Improved Hit Rates: Ensuring more comprehensive and reliable property assessments.
  • New Features: Including driveway condition insights and support for multi-structure properties, enabling insurers to prioritize resources and streamline inspections.

Tremendous Regulatory Momentum

This year brought significant progress in regulatory approvals, further validating ZestyAI’s solutions in key markets like California, Texas, and Colorado. Our models continue to set a benchmark for responsible AI adoption, ensuring insurers can confidently integrate advanced property risk insights into their workflows.

Delivering Performance Across Perils

ZestyAI’s AI-powered models continued to prove their value under the industry’s most challenging conditions:

  • Z-FIRE™: Recognized as the gold standard for wildfire risk across the U.S.
  • Z-HAIL™: Predicting hail claim frequency and severity with up to 58 times greater accuracy than traditional models.
  • Z-WIND™ and Z-STORM™: Delivering granular risk assessments for wind and storm-related risks.

These innovations are helping insurers reduce loss ratios, improve profitability, and ensure coverage availability where it’s needed most.

Looking Ahead to 2025

As we move into the new year, ZestyAI remains committed to revolutionizing risk management through AI-driven precision and proven performance. We will continue to help insurers navigate emerging challenges, drive efficiency, and build a more resilient future for their policyholders.

From all of us at ZestyAI, thank you for being part of this journey. Wishing you a wonderful holiday season and a successful year ahead.

Research

Now Streaming: Navigating California's Evolving Insurance Landscape

The California Department of Insurance (CDI) has introduced significant updates as part of its Sustainable Insurance Strategy. These new bulletins and draft regulations aim to accelerate regulatory approvals, embrace forward-looking models, and address critical reinsurance challenges.

But what do these changes mean for insurance carriers—and how can you prepare?

On January 29, 2025, we hosted a webinar, California’s Evolving Insurance Landscape: The Future of Insurance in the Golden State. 

Designed for Legal & Compliance professionals, Product Managers, Underwriters, Actuaries, and Risk & Innovation leaders, the discussion featured expert insights from:

  • Michael Peterson, Deputy Commissioner of Climate & Sustainability, California Department of Insurance
  • Karen Collins, VP, Property & Environmental, APCIA
  • Bryan Rehor, Head of Regulatory Affairs, ZestyAI

Missed the live event but want to gain actionable insights from industry leaders at the forefront of California’s insurance evolution? Watch on demand now!

Press Room

ZestyAI’s Severe Convective Storm Models Receive Regulatory Approval in Iowa

Regulatory approval empowers Iowa insurers to tackle rising storm losses with AI-powered property risk models.

ZestyAI, the leading provider of AI-powered climate and property risk analytics solutions, has received regulatory approval from the Iowa Insurance Division for its Severe Convective Storm suite, including Z-HAIL, Z-WIND, and Z-STORM. 

This approval marks a critical milestone in helping insurers address the growing challenges posed by severe weather in one of the Midwest’s most storm-affected states.

In 2024, Iowa experienced five billion-dollar severe weather events, with hailstorms driving billions in damages and insurance losses. In one instance, a hailstorm caused $2.4 billion in damage, underscoring the urgent need for innovative tools to assess and manage storm-related risks.

ZestyAI’s Severe Convective Storm suite delivers property-specific risk assessments, enabling insurers to predict and mitigate extreme weather impacts with precision. Designed with regulatory compliance at its core, Z-HAIL is validated using actual loss data and provides a clear breakdown of the top three risk drivers for each score. This transparency empowers insurers to make informed decisions and share actionable insights with policyholders. 

By analyzing climatology, geography, and building characteristics, ZestyAI equips insurers to identify high-risk properties, allocate resources strategically, and encourage proactive risk-reduction measures among policyholders.

"This approval empowers our carrier partners to act quickly and confidently in addressing Iowa’s severe weather challenges," said Bryan Rehor, Director of Regulatory Affairs at ZestyAI.

"By streamlining subsequent filings, we help insurers save time and resources, ultimately making high-quality property insurance more accessible to Iowa homeowners."

ZestyAI’s Severe Convective Storm suite has already received approvals in other key hail belt states, including Texas, Colorado, Illinois and Indiana, with additional filings in progress. These models enable insurers to move beyond reactive damage assessments, improving their ability to assess and manage storm-related risks at a granular, property-specific level.

With this approval, ZestyAI continues to lead the charge in equipping insurers with the tools they need to navigate an era of climate uncertainty, ensuring communities and insurers alike can better weather the storm.

Blog

Redesigning Our ML Infrastructure: 50% Faster APIs and 10x the Data Processing Power

Discover How the 'Monster Pod' Revolutionized Our Approach to Scaling Machine Learning Models.

                           Scaling a complex system of machine learning models while delivering real-time insights is no small feat. ZestyAI’s engineering team reimagined its architecture to overcome these challenges, leveraging NVIDIA’s Triton Inference Server and introducing the “Monster Pod.” This transformation halved API response times, increased throughput by 10x, and cut cloud costs by 75%. Dive into how strategic experimentation and innovative design unlocked efficiency and positioned ZestyAI for future growth.                        

By Andrew Merski, VP, Engineering 

The Challenge: A Complex and Scaling System

Business Context

At ZestyAI, we deliver critical insights to insurance clients using machine learning models. Our API processes a significant volume of data, including imagery, geolocation, and structured data, to produce real-time results. The complexity of each request places immense demands on our infrastructure:

  • Synchronous API Calls: Each request must be processed in real-time, with all insights delivered back to the client in a single response. Low latency is non-negotiable, as our clients’ workflows rely on immediate feedback.
  • Multiple ML Models Per Request: Each request may invoke up to 30 ML models, ranging from computer vision models analyzing aerial imagery to models synthesizing geospatial and tabular data.
  • Growing Model Catalog: The catalog of ML models we deploy continues to expand, driven by both customer needs and internal innovation. Each new model adds additional complexity to the system.
  • Exceptional Reliability: Our clients in the insurance sector demand a system that operates flawlessly, with uptime and accuracy critical to their decision-making processes.

Previous Architecture: A Decentralized Model

In our previous system, each ML model operated as an independent microservice. Each model scaled independently, and each instance required its own GPU. While functional, this architecture introduced critical issues:

  • Resource Underutilization: GPUs were underutilized, with non-GPU tasks consuming significant time.
  • Scaling Challenges: Periods of high API traffic put additional strain on system components, leading to some inefficiencies.

  • Capacity Limitations: The previous architecture had constraints that limited scalability, which could have restricted future growth.

This architecture also resulted in significant operational complexity. Each model’s independent deployment meant substantial manual effort in testing, scaling, and troubleshooting. Cloud costs also escalated rapidly as new models were added, creating diminishing returns for each improvement in service quality. 

The Solution: A Centralized Architecture with Triton

Faced with scaling challenges and rising customer demand, we reimagined the entire architecture. At the heart of the solution was NVIDIA’s Triton Inference Server, a tool designed for efficient multi-model serving.

Why Triton?

Triton enabled:

  • Shared GPU resources across models.
  • Ensemble models to define workflows using configuration rather than code.
  • Extensive benchmarking tools for performance optimization.
  • Support for various backends, including Python and Pytorch.

However, Triton required significant investment in layers of customization to meet our needs. Its low-level interface and lack of native autoscaling demanded a tailored implementation.

New Architecture: The Monster Pod

To maximize Triton’s potential, we introduced the “Monster Pod,” consolidating all models and supporting microservices into a single Kubernetes pod. Key features included:

  • Single-host model serving: All models resided in a unified Triton instance.
  • Integrated workflow management: The workflow orchestrator and other microservices were co-located with Triton.
  • Streamlined scaling: Each pod functioned as an independent unit, simplifying horizontal scaling.

This “Monster Pod” approach offered numerous benefits:

Improved Resource Utilization

  • Maximized GPU usage by serving multiple models per instance.
  • Reduced the overhead associated with multiple nodes and microservices.

Simplified Testing and Benchmarking

  • Each pod contained all necessary components, enabling comprehensive testing in isolation.
  • Benchmarking provided clear insights into throughput and resource requirements.

Reduced Scaling Overhead

  • Eliminated dependency on Istio for internal traffic management.
  • Simplified node provisioning and scheduling.

Predictable Costs

  • Each pod corresponds to a fixed node cost, allowing accurate cost planning. 

Lessons Learned

This project revealed critical insights that extend beyond Triton or even ML systems:

1. The "Microservices vs. Monolith" Debate Isn’t Binary
Architectural decisions don’t have to be all-or-nothing. For instance, while our deployment consolidated models into a single pod, we retained microservices for other aspects of the platform. Evaluating “single vs. many” decisions at multiple levels allowed us to optimize each layer independently.

2. Understand the Bottlenecks Before Designing Solutions
Identifying the root causes of inefficiency—scaling overhead, resource underutilization, network traffic—helped us design a system that addressed these challenges holistically rather than incrementally.

3. The Power of Consolidation
Integrating multiple components into a single deployment reduced complexity, improved performance, and simplified scaling. This approach may not suit every scenario, but in our case, it delivered transformative results.

4. Be Open to Temporary Solutions (Flexibility Leads to Innovation) 
The “Monster Pod” started as a quick workaround but became a permanent fixture due to its outsized impact. Being open to experimentation unlocked unexpected benefits, such as easier resource planning and reduced operational complexity.

Business Impact

Rebuilding our ML inference platform was a bold move that paid off. The new architecture produced dramatic improvements across key metrics:

  • Latency: API response times were halved.
  • Capacity: System throughput increased by 10x, eliminating the previous capacity ceiling.
  • Cost Efficiency: Cloud costs for model serving dropped by 75%.

These gains position us to scale with growing demand while maintaining industry-leading performance. Additionally, the simplified architecture has freed up engineering resources to focus on innovation rather than maintenance.

While Triton Inference Server played a critical role, the real success lay in our architectural decisions and willingness to rethink the status quo. This project underscores the value of experimentation and the importance of tailoring solutions to meet unique challenges.

The lessons learned from this journey will continue to inform our approach to system design and scalability as we look ahead. The Monster Pod has not only transformed our current capabilities—but has also set the stage for future growth and innovation.

For a deeper dive into the technical details, check out Andrew Merski’s original blog on Medium.

Press Room

ZestyAI Earns Top Recognition in Insurance Tech and Climate Risk

In an industry as established and thoughtful as insurance, bold innovation isn’t always easy to come by. ZestyAI is working to change that by integrating artificial intelligence into the core of how insurers manage risk, optimize pricing, and drive growth.

We are honored to receive two recognitions this year, highlighting the growing role of technology in driving meaningful progress and affirm our commitment to being a trusted partner for property insurers navigating an ever-evolving landscape

Leading the Way in P&C Insurance Technology

ZestyAI has been named one of the Everest Group’s Leading 50™ Property & Casualty (P&C) Insurance Technology Providers for 2024. This recognition celebrates technology providers that are transforming the P&C insurance sector through advanced platforms and solutions.

The Everest Group evaluated companies based on metrics such as revenue derived from P&C-focused technology, value chain coverage, and innovation in product offerings and partnerships.

ZestyAI earned accolades in two categories: Emerging Risks Intelligence and Assessment (Climate) and Risk Intelligence for Property Insurance.

These honors reflect the proven performance of our AI-driven platform under the most challenging conditions. From the devastating California wildfires of 2020 and 2021 to the unprecedented 2023 convective storm season, our models—Z-FIRE, Z-HAIL, Z-WIND, and Z-STORM—have consistently delivered reliable insights and results

Shaping the Future of Climate Risk Analytics

Chartis Research ranked ZestyAI 47th out of 175 organizations in climate risk analytics, recognizing our significant contributions to addressing climate risk challenges in insurance. This acknowledgment highlights our commitment to tackling secondary perils—including wildfire, hail, wind, and severe convective storms—through advanced AI-powered property insights and predictive models.

Our platform-driven approach, grounded in climate science, equips insurers with actionable, peril-specific insights. These tools empower them to navigate the complexities of climate risk, adapt to an evolving regulatory and environmental landscape, and optimize risk management strategies.

Driving Innovation and Excellence

This year’s recognitions join a growing list of accolades celebrating our contributions to innovation and excellence. ZestyAI has been named one of Forbes’ Top Startups to Work For in America, as well as one of Inc. 5000’s Fastest Growing Private Companies in America. Additional honors include recognition on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, inclusion in the CB Insights Insurtech 50, an AI Breakthrough Award for Machine Learning, and a PropertyCasualty360 Insurance Luminary award for Risk Management Innovation.

 These accolades inspire us to keep pushing boundaries, delivering exceptional value, and pursuing our mission to create a more sustainable and resilient insurance ecosystem.

Press Room

American Farmers & Ranchers Insurance Chooses ZestyAI to Enhance Property Risk Management

AFR chose ZestyAI for advanced aerial imagery, property insights, and peril-specific risk modeling solutions.

ZestyAI, the leading provider of climate and property risk analytics solutions powered by AI, has partnered with American Farmers & Ranchers Mutual Insurance Company (AFR), a trusted name in rural insurance in Oklahoma for over 100 years.

The partnership leverages ZestyAI’s aerial imagery and risk modeling solutions to enhance AFR’s property risk assessment and streamline underwriting processes.

With nearly 100% aerial imagery coverage across the contiguous U.S., ZestyAI’s platform delivers superior hit rates, unparalleled image quality, and peril-specific risk models for wildfire, wind, and hail—empowering AFR to assess risk at a granular, property-specific level.

Kimball Lynn, Director of Underwriting & Operations at AFR, said, “While our primary focus was aerial imagery, we quickly realized that ZestyAI’s solutions for assessing peril-specific risks like wind, hail, and wildfire made them a multifaceted underwriting solution. In Oklahoma, where  wind and hail are constants, their severe convective storm risk-scoring capabilities stood out.”

“The shift to ZestyAI's broader coverage footprint and more consistent, accurate, up-to-date imagery has improved our underwriting approach."

Carriers often face challenges with aerial imagery providers covering only 75%-80% of the U.S., leaving gaps in rural areas and outdated visuals. ZestyAI solves this by integrating data from all major aerial imagery providers, achieving nearly 100% hit rates with more recent imagery.

This approach ensures precise insights into property risks—such as roof quality, lot debris, and driveway condition—empowering insurers with a complete, up-to-date view.

Kimball Lynn added,

"ZestyAI’s training and platform are intuitive, which made for a smooth adoption, and the onboarding experience and ongoing support have made for a strong partnership so far.”

Attila Toth, Founder and CEO of ZestyAI, emphasized AFR’s proactive approach:

“AFR's foresight in preparing for emerging risks is setting an example for other carriers and demonstrates their dedication to innovative risk management and protecting their communities. We're proud to partner with a company that shares our commitment to proactive, data-driven risk management.”

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