ZestyAI Launches AI-Powered Property-Level Model to Predict $25B “Everyday Fire” Risk

ZestyAI, the Risk and Decision Intelligence platform for the insurance industry, today announced Z-SPARK™, an AI-powered model that predicts non-weather fire risk at the individual property level.

The model evaluates the factors that influence ignition and fire spread to help insurers identify the structures most likely to generate costly fire losses.

Most insurers still evaluate fire risk using neighborhood or territory level averages and limited historical loss data, even though risk can vary dramatically from one property to the next. Without property-level insight, insurers struggle to price risk accurately, increasing the likelihood of adverse selection and unexpected losses.

In 2023, around $25 billion in property losses occurred from non-weather-related fire incidents from sources such as grills, appliances, heaters, and electrical faults.

Z-SPARK applies 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. 

The model predicts both the probability of ignition and potential loss severity using advanced machine learning trained and validated on millions of real fire incidents and verified insurance claims.

With these insights, insurers can:

• Price with precision — align premiums with true property-level fire risk rather than broad geographic averages

• Streamline operations — support straight-through processing for low-risk properties

• Prioritize underwriting resources — focus manual review and inspections where risk warrants closer scrutiny

• Expand confidently — write business in challenging markets with a clearer view of actual exposure

• Protect portfolio performance — proactively manage concentration risk before losses accumulate

Z-SPARK delivers 30× greater risk differentiation than traditional territory-based models.

“Non-weather fire is one of the most costly and least understood risks in property insurance,” said Kumar Dhuvur, Founder and Chief Product Officer of ZestyAI. “Two homes on the same street can have dramatically different fire risk depending on how they were built, maintained, and what surrounds them. Yet most insurers still evaluate that risk using community-level scores. Z-SPARK reveals those hidden differences so insurers can make decisions based on the actual risk at each property.”

ZestyAI’s Z-FIRE wildfire model is widely used by insurers to assess catastrophic wildfire exposure. Z-SPARK extends that expertise to everyday building fires, applying the same property-level intelligence to the most costly source of insurance loss.

Together with models for hail, wind, severe convective storms, and water damage, Z-SPARK expands ZestyAI’s suite of AI-powered capabilities for assessing property risk across the most costly perils affecting insurance portfolios.

The platform applies agentic AI to streamline insurance operations, helping insurers research markets, prepare filings, and act on risk intelligence faster through ZORRO Discover.

Together, the ZestyAI platform gives insurers a comprehensive view of property-level risk and the tools to act on it across underwriting, pricing, and portfolio management.

Learn more about Z-SPARK here.