Denver, CO and San Francisco, CA - (July 21, 2026) - Hinterland Insurance, a specialty excess and surplus lines managing general agency, has deployed ResiQuant across its commercial earthquake and DIC program. The partnership combines Hinterland's specialty catastrophe underwriting expertise with ResiQuant's domain-specific AI, which automates end-to-end underwriting workflows while embedding engineering-grade structural intelligence - enabling the MGA to deliver both operational efficiency and analytical precision.
Hinterland has underwritten hard-to-place earthquake and difference-in-conditions risk since 2019, covering California DIC - including the state's highest-hazard Cresta zones - along with Washington and Oregon. As submission volumes rise and capacity partners demand higher-quality exposure data, Hinterland sought technology that could deliver both submission speed and the engineering-grade structural validation catastrophe underwriting requires - capabilities generalist platforms struggle to provide at scale.
ResiQuant addresses this through domain-specific AI built exclusively for catastrophe property. The platform automates submission intake while simultaneously validating building-level earthquake vulnerabilities - soft-story and tuck-under configurations, unreinforced masonry, non-ductile concrete, seismic retrofit status, and foundation characteristics. For a program that writes the older, harder-to-place buildings other markets decline, that validation lets Hinterland's underwriters move quickly while preserving the structural rigor that determines earthquake loss outcomes.
"After 10 years underwriting commercial earthquake risk and evaluating thousands of buildings across California's seismic zones, I know how much the gap between proxy data and verified structural characteristics can move a loss," said Fielding Norton, AVP, Commercial Earthquake at Hinterland Insurance. "Soft-story and non-ductile concrete buildings don't reveal their vulnerabilities on a submission spreadsheet, and brokers bringing us those hard-to-place risks need answers fast. Now my team can confirm a building's real structural condition at the point of underwriting, so we quote the accounts other markets pass on — with the speed brokers expect and the precision the exposure demands."
The deployment supports Hinterland's continued growth in catastrophe-exposed property. By giving capacity partners engineering-grade exposure data at the point of underwriting, ResiQuant's building-level validation reduces model uncertainty and supports more efficient capital deployment - letting the MGA expand its program while holding the line on risk selection.
"For our brokers, the change is simple: we can say yes to more of the hard accounts, faster," said Doug Thierjung, Chief Information Officer at Hinterland Insurance. "We built our earthquake program around ResiQuant because it was built by structural engineers to actually understand a building, and that lets us scale volume without diluting the engineering judgment our results depend on."
ResiQuant's platform was purpose-built for catastrophe-exposed property by Stanford structural engineering PhDs who have conducted post-disaster building assessments after major earthquakes. Unlike general-purpose underwriting automation, ResiQuant specializes exclusively in catastrophe property - where the structural characteristics that generic tools cannot validate determine loss outcomes, and where the difference between engineering-grade analysis and error-prone proxy data is the difference between pricing risk and guessing at it.
"California's earthquake DIC market exists to cover exactly the buildings standard property policies leave exposed - and too often, those are the non-ductile concrete and unreinforced masonry structures most likely to fail," said Dr. Francisco Galvis, Co-Founder and CTO of ResiQuant. "When AI can identify a soft-story configuration or confirm a seismic retrofit at the building level as accurately as a licensed engineer, but in a fraction of the time, an MGA like Hinterland can underwrite that exposure with precision instead of guesswork - and that changes the economics of writing earthquake risk."
The partnership comes as catastrophe-exposed property increasingly shifts into the excess and surplus lines market, where U.S. surplus lines premium reached a record of roughly $130 billion in 2024, its seventh consecutive year of double-digit growth (WSIA) - widening the opportunity for specialty MGAs that can underwrite complex earthquake risk with both speed and precision.
About Hinterland Insurance
Hinterland Insurance is a specialty managing general agency delivering E&S property solutions for a complex and evolving risk environment. Since launching in 2019, Hinterland has built data-driven, nationwide programs targeting underserved segments — including earthquake, flood, and other specialty property exposures — on both a monoline and package basis. As a delegated authority, Hinterland holds the pen on behalf of A-rated capacity partners, including Lloyd's of London, underwriting each risk individually rather than by automated rating — an approach built for the bespoke, hard-to-place accounts standard markets decline. Its commercial earthquake and DIC program offers full-value limits up to $55 million and primary limits up to $45 million across California, including Cresta Zones A and B, along with Washington, Oregon, and additional states. Based in Denver, Colorado, Hinterland places hard-to-write risk with the speed, flexibility, and structural expertise the segment demands.
About ResiQuant
ResiQuant is an agentic AI underwriting platform for property insurers and MGAs with natural catastrophe exposure. Founded by Stanford structural engineering PhDs Dr. Omar Issa and Dr. Francisco Galvis, ResiQuant combines advanced artificial intelligence with decades of structural engineering expertise to deliver building-level risk insights across earthquake, wildfire, and coastal wind perils. The platform enables carriers and MGAs to underwrite catastrophe-exposed property with both the speed of automation and the precision of engineering-grade analysis at scale. ResiQuant raised a $4M seed round in late 2024 led by LDV Capital, with participation from Foothill Ventures, Pear VC, and Alumni Ventures.
