Columbia Lloyds Taps ZestyAI to Sharpen Risk Decisions in Hail Alley

WHY THIS MATTERS

The announcement by Columbia Lloyds Insurance Company that it has selected ZestyAI’s Risk and Decision Intelligence platform represents a vital defensive maneuver for regional property and casualty (P&C) carriers. Writing homeowners insurance across Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas means operating in the absolute crosshairs of America’s most destructive atmospheric perils—including catastrophic convective storms, devastating hail, and high-velocity tornadoes.

In these volatile territories, relying on legacy actuarial assumptions or unverified homeowner disclosures is a recipe for balance sheet insolvency. Columbia Lloyds is integrating ZestyAI’s proprietary Z-PROPERTY™ and AI-driven Roof Age models to completely overhaul its underwriting accuracy. By utilizing over 20 years of high-resolution aerial imagery cross-referenced against localized building permit registries, the platform exposes critical anomalies—such as unpermitted roof replacements, degrading shingle conditions, and complex architectural over-exposure—that standard databases completely miss. This granular, property-level view allows the carrier to price risk with surgical precision, reducing claims volatility and safeguarding its reinsurance capacity in an increasingly uninsurable climate.

Columbia Lloyds Insurance Company, a Houston-based regional insurer serving homeowners across Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, has selected ZestyAI’s Risk and Decision Intelligence platform to sharpen underwriting accuracy, strengthen portfolio management, and improve visibility into property condition and risk exposure across its book of business.

Columbia Lloyds will use ZestyAI’s Z-PROPERTY™ model to evaluate roof complexity, materials, condition, and surrounding risk factors that directly shape loss potential and underwriting outcomes. Paired with ZestyAI’s Roof Age – which cross-validates building permit records against more than 20 years of aerial imagery to detect replacement events that traditional records miss and assigns a confidence score to every property – the carrier gains a verified, property-level view of exposure it can apply consistently across its homeowners book.

Sam Bana, Chief Operating Officer of Columbia Lloyds, said: “We write homeowners business in some of the toughest weather territory in the country. ZestyAI gives us the verified property data we need to make better decisions on every risk we write and across the portfolio as a whole.”

Attila Toth, Founder and CEO of ZestyAI said: “The carriers succeeding in the most weather-exposed markets today are the ones operating on verified, property-level data rather than assumptions. Columbia Lloyds is taking a disciplined approach to how they underwrite, price, and manage exposure, and we’re proud to support how they’re shaping a more resilient book across Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.”

ZestyAI’s models are built with transparency, validation, and regulatory readiness at the forefront, giving insurers confidence to rely on them in portfolio decisions. With more than 200 regulatory approvals secured nationwide, the platform is used by leading insurers to improve underwriting accuracy, manage exposure, and reduce loss volatility across weather- and non-weather-driven perils.

FF NEWS TAKE

Columbia Lloyds is executing a text-book play in climate-risk mitigation. As national insurance giants actively pull out of severe-weather states due to compounding multi-billion-dollar losses, agile regional carriers can capture massive market share—if they possess superior data. Under COO Sam Bana, Columbia Lloyds is replacing the highly subjective and expensive practice of manual physical home inspections with automated, instant AI profiling.

The true operational moat here belongs to ZestyAI. Led by CEO Attila Toth, the insurtech has quietly cleared the highest hurdle in the AI space: regulatory approval. With more than 200 state insurance department approvals secured nationwide, ZestyAI’s models are legally defensible, giving carriers the compliance coverage they need to safely adjust premium pricing or decline over-exposed properties without triggering fair-housing or consumer-protection pushback. By embedding this transparent, audit-ready intelligence layer directly into its core policy administration systems, Columbia Lloyds is proving that regional insurers don’t need to flee weather-exposed markets; they just need to stop underwriting blind.