DUAL North America, Kingstone Companies and Windward Risk Managers have launched new California homeowners programs with ZestyAI partnerships.

The three companies are using ZestyAI’s wildfire risk model, Z-FIRE, to support new California homeowners programs. The three programs arrive in a market still absorbing the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. The Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed more than 16,200 structures and drove an estimated $40 billion in insured losses — the largest insured wildfire loss event on record, according to the Swiss Re Institute.

Yet wildfire risk in California is highly concentrated. ZestyAI’s analysis of 2025 property data places just 11% of the state’s homes in its High Risk wildfire tier, and Z-FIRE had rated 94% of the area burned by the Palisades Fire and 87% of the Eaton burn area High Risk.

“For three years, the California story has been about who was leaving,” said Attila Toth, founder and CEO of ZestyAI, in a company press release. “DUAL North America, Kingstone and Windward are writing a different story—each entering the state with a clear, property-by-property view of wildfire risk. That’s the kind of precision that lets capacity stay.”

Trained on more than 2,000 historical wildfire events, Z-FIRE uses machine learning to evaluate each property’s defensible space, vegetation proximity, topography, building materials, and surrounding fire behavior patterns, predicting both the likelihood that a property will encounter wildfire and the vulnerability of the individual structure once exposed. The model is approved across all Western wildfire markets.

Specialty program administrator DUAL North America is using Z-FIRE to assess wildfire exposure at the individual-property level as it builds its California homeowners portfolio. DUAL first adopted Z-STORM™ in late 2025 to strengthen hail and wind underwriting across its U.S. portfolio. The addition of Z-FIRE expands its use of ZestyAI’s risk models across major catastrophe perils.

Kingstone has selected Z-FIRE as it enters the California homeowners market on an excess and surplus lines basis, marking the company’s first geographic expansion outside the Northeast. The model will support rating, underwriting and accumulation management as Kingstone scales its California business.

Windward Risk Managers is extending its partnership with ZestyAI as it expands from Florida into the California homeowners market. The company currently uses Z-PROPERTY across its Florida portfolio to assess structural and parcel characteristics in a hurricane exposed market. Windward is now bringing that same property level approach to California, using Z-FIRE to evaluate wildfire exposure and manage risk at the individual property level.

***

Verisk announced a new U.S. Data Center Exposure Database designed to help insurers, reinsurers and brokers better understand and manage data center risk.

The database provides building-level geocoding, facility footprints, physical characteristics and operational attributes for more than 2,500 facilities nationwide. The Verisk U.S. Data Center Exposure Database can be leveraged to support a range of use cases within Verisk Synergy Studio and Touchstone.

“AI is often discussed as a digital transformation story, but it is increasingly a physical infrastructure story,” said Rob Newbold, president of Verisk Catastrophe and Risk Solutions, in a company press release. “The facilities powering that growth represent billions of dollars in concentrated assets, and that has implications not only for insurers but also for reinsurers, investors and capital markets participants looking to understand and manage emerging sources of potential risk.”

The Verisk U.S. Data Center Exposure Database includes detailed location, structural and operational information for facilities across the country. It includes flat-file records, building footprint shapefiles, and a 90-meter disaggregation grid to support advanced geospatial analytics and catastrophe modeling applications. The database is designed to support underwriting, exposure management, catastrophe analytics, and portfolio accumulation assessments.

“Data centers have quietly become one of the largest and fastest-growing concentrations of insured value in the modern economy,” said Jay Guin, executive vice president and chief research officer, Verisk Catastrophe and Risk Solutions. “Organizations are investing billions of dollars to support AI-driven growth, but many insurers are increasingly focused on understanding where these assets are located and how risk accumulates across regions and portfolios. If you can’t identify the exposure, you can’t effectively measure or manage it. This data set is designed to provide additional information to support those efforts.”

Sources: ZestyAI, Verisk