April 13, 2026
By John Dunn, Head of Enterprise Sales
For the past few years, “no appetite for wildfire” was a defensible position in the commercial and E&S property market. Rates were hard, submissions were plentiful, and carriers could afford to be selective. That’s changing. Property rates are now declining double digits across most occupancy classes, capacity is returning, and underwriting leaders who retreated from wildfire-exposed business are being asked the same question: how do we get back in profitably?
It’s a fair question, and most of the tools currently available weren’t built to answer it.
The Problem with Traditional Wildfire Scores
Most wildfire risk tools tell you where fire has historically been a hazard. What they don’t tell you is when wildfire activity is likely to re-emerge, how resilient the structure is when it does, or what you can actually do about it. Those distinctions matter more than most underwriters realize.
Think about two properties sitting in similar terrain with similar vegetation. On a traditional hazard score, they look nearly identical. But if one location last burned in 1998 and the other burned in 2021, they are carrying fundamentally different risk right now. Fire-prone landscapes follow natural burn cycles, and the longer a location goes without burning, the more fuel accumulates and the more “overdue” it becomes. A static score won’t show you that.
“Fire-prone landscapes follow natural burn cycles, and the longer a location goes without burning, the more fuel accumulates and the more “overdue” it becomes. A static score won’t show you that.”
The Wildfire Recurrence Score does. It incorporates each property’s actual fire history and the typical burn cycle for its landscape, producing a time-based view of risk that reflects where a location sits in its cycle today. It refreshes weekly as fuel conditions change. The result is a forward-looking signal, not just a map of where fires have happened, but an indication of which locations are most likely to see fire return.
It’s also priced and designed to be used everywhere: across admitted and non-admitted books, on high-volume segments, at the point of submission and on full book evaluations. In a soft market where you need to move efficiently across more submissions, that matters.
Knowing When Fire Might Return Is Only Part of the Picture
Once you’ve identified elevated recurrence risk, the next question is one most tools still can’t answer: will this structure survive if fire does return?
The Wildfire Resiliency Score fills that gap. Rather than assessing risk at the community or regional level, it evaluates the structural and parcel-specific characteristics that actually drive wildfire outcomes for an individual property. It combines 200+ wildfire-relevant data points with expert judgment from experienced wildfire professionals, synthesized into four transparent sub-scores and an overall resiliency measure.
In a softening market where you’re being asked to say yes more often, the Resiliency Score is what gives you the confidence to do that selectively. It’s fast enough to use at scale, specific enough to act on, and transparent enough to defend.
When the Stakes Are Highest
For large, complex, high-value properties where the difference between a well-protected structure and an underprotected one can mean millions in loss, scores alone may not be sufficient. These are the risks where underwriters need to understand not just how a property scores, but why, and what can actually change the outcome.
The Wildfire Risk Insight Report is built for exactly those situations. It delivers a comprehensive, property-level view of wildfire exposure, severity, mitigation effectiveness, and suppression factors in a single actionable report. It gives underwriters and their management committees the supporting evidence to make confident, documented decisions, and it prioritizes the mitigation actions that would most meaningfully improve structure survivability. It’s also a more cost-effective alternative to traditional in-person loss control.
A Smarter Workflow for a Softer Market
These tools work best as a layered approach that matches depth of analysis to the nature of the risk. Recurrence gives you a fast, affordable signal across the full book. Where that signal is elevated, the Resiliency Score provides property-level clarity on structural performance. And for complex, high-value risks where the decision requires more than a score, the Risk Insight Report takes you the rest of the way.
The carriers who grow profitably in this market won’t be the ones who avoided wildfire-prone areas. They’ll be the ones who found a smarter way to differentiate within them.
If you’re thinking through how to approach wildfire exposure this year, we are happy to share how other underwriting teams are putting this to work.
