San Diego-based startup FutureProof is using artificial intelligence (AI) to change the way insurers assess catastrophe risk and set premiums, a shift that could make insurance both more affordable and easier to come by in disaster-prone regions.
“FutureProof started with thinking about the build environment and everyone’s homes and businesses,” FutureProof co-founder and co-CEO Alisa Valderrama told HousingWire. “[What] I saw was that there wasn’t an easy way for property owners to calculate the return on investment if they were going to make improvements to their property [that would] make them more climate resilient and resilient to natural disasters.”
Valderrama, who came from a background in infrastructure finance and energy efficiency, said property owners can easily calculate paybacks on energy investments like insulation or solar panels, but the economics of disaster resilience have been far less clear.
“What we decided to do was ultimately use AI in order to create a new model that could tell property owners not just what their risk looked like today given their property features, but also how their risk would go down if those property features were altered,” she said.
Property by property, not zip code by zip code
The company’s biggest innovation lies in moving away from traditional underwriting practices that often paint entire neighborhoods with a broad brush.
“Here in California, there are property owners who don’t live anywhere near open space, and yet they can’t get insurance because somewhere in their zip code, there’s some exposure to fire,” Valderrama said.
Instead of relying on broad zip code-based risk maps and subjective human judgment, FutureProof’s algorithm analyzes details such as roof condition and building materials.
“Our AI enabled technology can look at a very specific address and take all those property features into account and generate essentially the algorithmic underwriting, an instantly bindable quote that is particular for that property,” Valderrama said.
The goal is to reward resilient construction and mitigation measures with lower premiums.
“For the properties that are more resilient, or for property owners that have made investments to make their properties more resilient, they should be able to benefit from lower cost property insurance,” Valderrama said. “That’s something that the industry has not really been able to produce at this point.”
FutureProof was recently recognized as a finalist for the 2025 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability — an award sponsored by Ivory Innovations, a nonprofit academic research center based at the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business.
Expanding coverage in abandoned markets
FutureProof launched in August 2024, beginning in Florida and Mississippi with a focus on catastrophe-exposed commercial properties.
The company says its models helped it weather hurricanes Helene and Milton without losses, validating the approach.
FutureProof has also started writing a small number of residential properties and plans to expand into California, Texas and Alabama. Its technology is supported by multiple models, including hurricane, flood, wildfire and severe storm risk.
“What we’re hoping is to help offer coverage in places where insurance is either really hard to get or very expensive,” Valderrama said. “It’s not that we can go and offer low-cost insurance to every single property owner, but if there’s a property that, in fact, lowers its risk, our technology is designed to price particularly to that risk.”
Building an in-house insurer
For now, FutureProof operates as a managing general agent (MGA), essentially an outsourced underwriting partner for carriers.
The company also runs an insurance agency appointed by more than 27 major carriers, including Chubb, Liberty Mutual and Progressive, Valderrama said.
“In that case, we are not repricing the insurance policies sold by other carriers, but instead, what we’re doing is running those policies through our system and saying, ‘Hey, do we think this policy is going to be profitable?’” she said.
But the company’s long-term vision is to stand up its own carrier.
Valderrama says being a carrier would allow FutureProof to guarantee savings tied directly to resilience upgrades.
“If you can make these changes to make your property more resilient, if you’re resilient today, great — FutureProof can probably offer you a lower cost quote,” she said. “That’s the loop that we want to close.”
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