Former Verisk CEO Scott Stephenson Joins ZestyAI’s Board of Directors as Insurance Accelerates into the AI Era

ZestyAI, the Risk and Decision Intelligence Platform for the insurance industry, today announced that Scott Stephenson, former Chairman, President, and CEO of Verisk Analytics, has joined its Board of Directors, bringing one of the principal architects of insurance’s data modernization to the company at a pivotal moment for artificial intelligence in the industry.

Stephenson spent more than two decades at Verisk, including nine as Chairman, President, and CEO (2013–2022), where he helped transform the company into a global data and analytics leader for the insurance industry. Under his leadership, Verisk more than quadrupled its market capitalization, became a component of the S&P 500 Index, and was repeatedly named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Forbes.

Prior to Verisk, Stephenson was a Senior Partner at the Boston Consulting Group, where he advised Fortune 50 CEOs and founded the firm’s Southeastern U.S. practice. He currently serves on multiple public and nonprofit boards, including PSEG (NYSE) and Definitive Healthcare (NASDAQ).

Stephenson’s appointment comes as insurance moves beyond its data-driven modernization phase into a new stage where artificial intelligence is embedded across enterprise decision workflows.

“Insurance is one of the world’s most essential financial systems – a centuries-old institution that underpins economic growth and resilience,” said Attila Toth, Founder and CEO of ZestyAI. “Over the past two decades, data and actuarial science reshaped underwriting and risk management. Scott helped lead that transformation. Today, artificial intelligence is becoming the core decision infrastructure across the enterprise. His experience building durable, proprietary analytics platforms at a global scale is invaluable as we build the next generation of AI-powered risk intelligence.”

“This industry has endured for centuries because it adapts,” said Scott Stephenson. “The last major shift put data and analytics at the center of the enterprise. The next competitive frontier will belong to companies that build durable advantages from proprietary data and apply artificial intelligence to understand and manage risk with greater precision. ZestyAI is building exactly that kind of platform, pairing unique property intelligence with trustworthy AI to strengthen how insurers underwrite and manage portfolios. I look forward to working with the team as they scale this capability across the industry.”

A Year of Momentum and Scale

Stephenson joins ZestyAI at a moment of accelerating scale and operating leverage.

In the past year ZestyAI has:

• Turned cash flow positive while more than doubling product usage across underwriting, rating, and reinsurance workflows

• Added 26 new carrier clients, including Marsh, Lemonade, Applied Underwriters, and California Casualty

• Expanded commercial relationships with 12 existing enterprise customers through new agreements, including Berkshire Hathaway, CSAA, and the California FAIR Plan

• Surpassed 200 regulatory approvals nationwide, spanning multiple products and perils

• Introduced ZORRO, its agentic AI platform, embedding AI into enterprise workflows, including underwriting, portfolio management, and competitive intelligence

• Launched Z-SPARK which provides modern fire science and property-level intelligence to analyze how building materials, maintenance conditions, surrounding structures, local fire response capacity, and climate drive ignition and fire spread

Building on its continued leadership in wildfire risk analytics, in 2025 ZestyAI aggressively expanded the adoption of its severe convective storm, wind, hail, and non-weather water suite of models, reinforcing ZestyAI’s evolution into a multi-peril decision intelligence platform.

That momentum is translating into measurable market impact. In 2025 alone, insurers using ZestyAI enabled coverage for nearly one million families and businesses previously considered difficult or uneconomic to insure, expanding access to coverage in catastrophe-exposed regions while maintaining underwriting discipline.

“ZestyAI has delivered what we look for in a market-defining company — disciplined execution, enterprise adoption, and profitable growth,” said Ben Cukier, Founder and Managing Partner at Centana Growth Partners and board member of ZestyAI. “The company has expanded into a multi-peril AI platform embedded across underwriting, rating, and reinsurance workflows. Welcoming Scott Stephenson to the board at this stage reinforces both the scale of the opportunity and the strength of the foundation already in place.”