Zesty.ai, the leader in climate risk analytics powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), today announced that The Cincinnati Insurance Company has successfully integrated its predictive wildfire risk analytics solution, Z-FIRE™ across the carrier’s personal lines property portfolio. With Z-FIRE, Cincinnati is able to assess wildfire risk using an AI model that’s been trained on more than 1,200 wildfire events across several decades and accounts for the property-level factors that contribute to wildfire risk, compared to the ZIP code-wide perspective that legacy models rely on.
“We were immediately impressed with Zesty.ai’s ability to provide precise risk scores for individual properties at scale,” said Scott Schuler, assistant vice president, Personal Lines – Product for The Cincinnati Insurance Company. “Z-FIRE enhances our current wildfire risk assessment tools, increasing our teams’ confidence in writing more business for the independent agents who represent us while simultaneously giving homeowners more coverage options.”
When assessing risk, Z-FIRE considers building materials, topography, historical weather data, and critically, factors extracted from high-resolution imagery like vegetation clearance and mitigation efforts, which legacy models fail to evaluate. It then combines these details with actual loss data to derive a predictive risk score, giving insurance carriers a much more accurate risk metric to inform underwriting, while taking into account many of the home hardening efforts taken on by property owners.
“Five of the six largest wildfires in California history occurred last year. As the costs of climate change continue to increase, it’s critical that the insurance industry and its customers look beyond the status quo and embrace emerging technologies like AI to better understand the risks associated with natural disasters,” said Attila Toth, CEO of Zesty.ai. “The Cincinnati Insurance Company has always been known for its progressive approach, and we’re proud of our partnership with them as they further cement their pioneering position, providing homeowners with policies that accurately reflect a property’s wildfire risk.”
