ZestyAI today announced a new enhancement to its Severe Convective Storm (SCS) risk suite that enables carriers to adjust model inputs and risk scores based on mitigation efforts.
The enhancement gives insurers a structured and scalable way to reflect real-world improvements, such as upgrading roof materials, replacing aging roofs, or addressing structural deficiencies, directly within property-level risk assessments.
Carriers can now instantly update risk scores based on verified property data, enabling three key use cases:
- Reflecting completed mitigation: Recognize risk-reducing actions like roof upgrades or structural improvements in real time, improving rating accuracy and customer satisfaction.
- Correcting inaccurate data: If errors are identified, such as incorrect roof material, carriers can transparently correct inputs to ensure fairer, more accurate risk assessments.
- Simulating future changes: Carriers can model the potential impact of proposed upgrades before they occur, helping agents and homeowners understand the value of mitigation and reinforcing behavior that reduces future losses.
Kumar Dhuvur, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of ZestyAI, said:
“Models should be powerful, but also flexible and responsive to real-world improvements.”
“By giving carriers the ability to incorporate mitigation and field data into model outputs, we’re supporting transparent, action-oriented risk management that benefits both insurers and homeowners.”
This mitigation-aware functionality is already in use across ZestyAI’s wildfire products, including Z-FIRE™ and Compliance Pre-Fill, where it supports critical regulatory filings and enables carriers to reflect mitigation actions like defensible space and Class A roofs. Extending this capability to the SCS suite ensures a consistent, carrier-controlled approach to incorporating verified improvements across perils.
This enhancement reflects ZestyAI’s broader commitment to human-in-the-loop AI, where insurers remain in control of key decisions and have visibility into the data behind every score. By combining transparency with the ability to incorporate verified updates, ZestyAI helps carriers build trust with both regulators and policyholders while ensuring model outputs remain grounded in real-world conditions.
The score adjustment capability is seamlessly integrated into the ZestyAI platform and supports a wide range of use cases, including improving product fit, optimizing inspection workflows, enhancing underwriting decisions, and ensuring rating accuracy. The Z-HAIL™, Z-WIND™, and Z-STORM™ models are built on real-world claims data and leverage property-specific features such as roof geometry, condition, and vegetation to deliver more accurate risk insights than traditional territory-based models.
ZestyAI’s storm models are approved for use in over 20 states across the Great Plains, Midwest, and U.S. South, regions most impacted by severe convective storms, and are actively used by carriers for rating and underwriting.