Newly launched specialty MGA deploys AI-powered structural intelligence to build building-level precision into its Florida condominium book from day one
Tampa, FL and San Francisco, CA — (August 6, 2026) — Crestwell Underwriters, a specialty managing general agent based in Tampa, Florida , has deployed ResiQuant to underwrite its Florida condominium-association property book. The partnership pairs the underwriting experience of Crestwell's operating team with ResiQuant's domain-specific AI, which automates end-to-end underwriting workflows while embedding engineering-grade structural intelligence—letting a new MGA build both operational speed and building-level precision into its book from the first policy.
Crestwell launched in 2025 to serve Florida’s condominium and homeowners association market, a segment that had experienced significant disruption through 2024 due to escalating catastrophe losses, widespread litigation, and the contraction of the domestic property insurance market. These factors drove premium increases that, in many cases, exceeded 50% while simultaneously reducing available capacity and limiting coverage options for insureds.
As the effects of Senate Bill 2-A, enacted in December 2022, began to reshape the Florida insurance landscape—and following two relatively benign storm seasons in 2024 and 2025—Crestwell recognized that success would require a fundamentally different approach. The company understood that the market had transitioned from one characterized by scarcity and hard-market pricing to one marked by increasing capacity, new market entrants, and double-digit rate reductions.
“Entering the market with the same old, tried-and-true playbook was not going to result in sustainable success,” said Paul DiFrancesco, Crestwell’s Chief Underwriting Officer. “We knew we had to be ahead of the competition—not simply keeping pace with it—in how we approach risk selection, pricing, and portfolio management. Our partnership with ResiQuant gives us a strong foundation to do exactly that and positions us well for long-term success in this evolving marketplace.”
ResiQuant addresses this through domain-specific AI built exclusively for catastrophe property. The platform automates submission intake while simultaneously validating the building characteristics that drive condominium wind and structural risk—roof covering and deck attachment, roof-to-wall connections, opening protection, building age and construction type, and the structural-condition factors now central to underwriting Florida condominiums. Because Crestwell has no legacy exposure to unwind, that validation shapes risk selection at the point of intake rather than years later.
"In four decades of underwriting, I've spent a good share of that time cleaning up books that were assembled without the structural facts," said Paul DiFrancesco. "Building a new company gives you one rare advantage: you can insist on the truth about a building before you ever put it on the books. With ResiQuant, every account is screened for its actual wind and structural condition at intake, so our risk selection is precise from the first policy instead of something we correct later. Starting clean is only an advantage if you underwrite clean."
As Crestwell grows, ResiQuant's building-level validation gives its capacity partners engineering-grade exposure data from the outset—reducing model uncertainty on a concentrated Florida wind portfolio and supporting the kind of disciplined growth a new MGA needs to earn long-term capacity.
ResiQuant's platform was purpose-built for catastrophe-exposed property by Stanford structural engineering PhDs who have assessed how buildings actually perform after major catastrophes, from earthquakes to hurricanes. Unlike horizontal platforms designed for multi-line underwriting, ResiQuant specializes exclusively in catastrophe property—where the structural characteristics that generic automation cannot see determine how a building withstands the wind, and whether the policy behind it performs.
"After Hurricane Ian, we walked buildings that looked identical from the street but performed nothing alike—the difference lived in roof connections and construction details no submission spreadsheet ever captured," said Dr. Omar Issa, Co-Founder and CEO of ResiQuant. "A new MGA like Crestwell can act on that from day one. When AI can read a building's wind vulnerabilities as reliably as an engineer on site, but across an entire submission queue in minutes, an underwriter can select condominium risk on how it will actually hold up—not on the zip code it sits in."
About Crestwell Underwriters
Crestwell Underwriters, LLC is a specialty managing general agent focused on property insurance for Florida's condominium and homeowner residential associations. Launched for business in 2025 and headquartered in Tampa, Florida, Crestwell is led by insurance veterans with more than three decades of experience each, including Chief Executive Officer Kathy Cody and Chief Underwriting Officer Paul DiFrancesco. The company underwrites admitted property coverage built for Florida's catastrophe-exposed condominium market.
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.
