MAP Underwriting (Managing Agency Partners), a Lloyd’s of London managing agency, has adopted ZestyAI’s Z-FIRE to strengthen wildfire risk analysis across its property reinsurance portfolio.
MAP has selected Z-FIRE, ZestyAI’s wildfire risk model, to improve the evaluation and management of California wildfire risk within its property re/insurance portfolio.
The partnership marks ZestyAI’s first international expansion and highlights growing global concern from insurers about the impact of wildfires.
Operating Syndicate 2791 at Lloyd’s, MAP is widely known for its technical underwriting discipline. Central to its strategy is exposure analysis, where the firm creates its own view of risk by combining key inputs to keep its portfolio exposure balanced.
In California, loss-driving structural and environmental conditions change rapidly over short distances, outpacing broad-scale models.
This variability requires high-resolution data, as traditional model frequently smooth over localised differences and introduce pricing and exposure uncertainty.
Z-FIRE addresses this gap by providing a more refined view of wildfire risk. The model is able to forecast which specific properties face the highest risk of experiencing a wildfire and which are structurally equipped to survive it.
By leveraging computer and machine learning, the model captures how structural and environmental characteristics — defensible space, vegetation density, building materials, and topography — interact at the property level to drive loss outcomes, and is trained on the industry’s largest wildfire loss dataset.
Integrated into its underwriting framework, this intelligence strengthens MAP’s exposure analysis. Teams will be able to use it to distinguish with more precision wildfire risk across California and to maintain a more consistent, data-driven understanding of portfolio exposure.
“At MAP, we build our own view of risk and rely on high-quality data that strengthens that perspective,” said Nick Williams, Deputy Active Underwriter at MAP. “Z-FIRE enhances MAP’s view of California wildfire risk with a higher-resolution view that integrates cleanly into our framework and supports more confident decisions across our portfolio.”
“The London market is paying closer attention to wildfire than ever before, and the bar for hazard intelligence underneath that work has risen with it,” said Attila Toth, Founder and CEO of ZestyAI. “MAP is one of the most respected property (re)insurance teams at Lloyd’s, and partnering with them on California wildfire is a meaningful first step in bringing Z-FIRE to the broader London Market.
“This partnership highlights the growing international demand for greater risk intelligence solutions and marks an exciting new chapter for ZestyAI.”
