Why Your Zip Code Is Uninsurable

One insurance company had zero losses in the 2025 LA fires. Meanwhile, State Farm, Allstate, and Farmers all pulled back coverage across the US. So what does this company know that 100-year-old insurers don't? *Want to know the other industries primed for disruption? We found them:* https://clickhubspot.com/a8oz Traditional home insurance prices risk by zip code — a system built for mail delivery, not wildfire prediction. That's why entire neighborhoods get flagged "uninsurable" even when some houses on the block would clearly survive a fire. A new wave of startups — Kettle, Delos, Kin — are throwing out the zip code model entirely, using satellite imagery, lidar, and AI to assess fire risk house by house. The results are wild: one model correctly predicted 97% of the homes that actually burned in California's wildfires, and another wrote 25,000 policies in fire-prone areas without a single loss in the Palisades and Eaton fires. We dig into how they're rebuilding insurance from the ground up — and the outdated regulations, like a 1988 California law, still standing in their way. 0:00 The houses that survive 1:18 How home insurance actually works 3:47 Why whole communities become uninsurable 5:53 Why insurance companies keep leaving states 7:20 The startups rewriting the risk map 12:48 Why doesn't all insurance work like this? 13:38 Why old laws block new tech 15:32 Can AI actually save home insurance? Get the 5-minute newsletter keeping 2M+ innovators in the loop: https://thehustle.co/join-free-2