RockRose Risk is a tech-enabled insurance broker focused on catastrophe-exposed properties. The company combines on-site risk assessments, AI-driven underwriting automation, scientifically grounded risk reports, and access to multiple insurance carriers to help property owners reduce risk, secure optimized coverage, and fund mitigation through insurance savings. Pulse 2.0 interviewed RockRose Risk Founder and CEO Andrew Engler to learn more.
Andrew Engler’s Background
When asked about his background, Engler shared:
I’ve spent the majority of my career at the intersection of insurance and technology. I started at Allstate and later worked at Argo Group, including time in Bermuda working with reinsurers. That experience gave me a deep understanding of how catastrophe risk is modeled and financed at a global level.
In 2020, I founded Kettle, a wildfire-focused parametric insurer, which helped demonstrate that many of these climate-driven risks are not only predictable, but quantifiable.
Over time, it became clear to me that while we had the tools to model these risks, we weren’t doing enough to actually prevent them. That realization led to the founding of RockRose Risk, with the goal of shifting insurance from a reactive model to a preventative one.
How RockRose Risk Started
When asked how the idea for the company came together, Engler explained:
The idea came from the realization that catastrophic risks like wildfires and floods are not just insurable, but they’re often preventable.
While working closely with mitigation companies and risk models, I saw that there were highly effective ways to reduce risk, like fuel reduction, structural hardening, and infrastructure upgrades, but there was not a scalable way to pay for them.
At the same time, insurers were losing billions from these events.
RockRose Risk was built to connect those two realities. We work with insurers to return a portion of premiums to property owners, enabling them to invest in mitigation upfront.
Instead of waiting for a $50 billion loss, the system can invest earlier to prevent it entirely.
Favorite Memory
When asked about his favorite memory working for the company so far, Engler said:
One of my favorite memories so far was helping the McCloud HOA community in North Lake Tahoe achieve a major breakthrough in both wildfire resilience and insurance affordability.
It was one of RockRose Risk’s first large-scale examples of how proactive mitigation, paired with better risk analysis, can materially change outcomes for communities facing growing wildfire threats.
McCloud had been dealing with skyrocketing premiums and shrinking insurance options despite taking meaningful steps to reduce wildfire risk.
By working closely with the community, we helped document and quantify their mitigation efforts through advanced wildfire risk modeling, expert analysis, and onsite assessments. That allowed us to build a comprehensive, data-driven risk profile that underwriters could actually understand and price appropriately.
The result was incredibly rewarding. In the first year, McCloud secured sustainable coverage and reduced premiums by roughly 33%, saving the community more than $400,000 annually, dropping from a peak of $1.34 million to $913,000. The community reinvested a portion of those savings into continued mitigation work, including parcel-level hardening guided by a detailed Wildfire Hazard Assessment. At the second-year renewal in 2026, that ongoing investment paid off again with premiums renewed at $414,000 (roughly 69% below where they started) with wildfire deductibles slashed from $250,000 to $25,000 and earthquake coverage doubled to $5 million.
What made that experience especially memorable was realizing that we were helping a community create a long-term path toward resilience and financial sustainability. The savings fund the mitigation, and the mitigation funds more savings. That cycle is exactly what we set out to build.
Core Products And Features
When asked about RockRose Risk’s core products and features, Engler detailed:
RockRose Risk is a tech-enabled insurance broker focused on catastrophe-exposed properties.
Our core offering includes on-site risk assessments in partnership with mitigation providers, AI-driven automation to streamline underwriting and quoting, scientifically grounded risk reports that translate mitigation into insurer-recognized value, and access to 19 insurance carriers to secure optimized policies.
We also recently launched our homeowners insurance product in California as well, extending the same assess-mitigate-place model we’ve proven on the commercial side to residential property owners for the first time. The product includes an automated California FAIR Plan quoting and binding tool that applies mitigation credits at the point of sale, and uses a layered coverage structure pairing a FAIR Plan base policy with a Difference in Conditions wrap.
What makes our model unique is that, unlike other models that just shop for lower premiums, we actively reduce risk and help clients fund mitigation using the savings generated.
Industry Challenges
When asked about recent challenges in the sector and how RockRose Risk has addressed them, Engler explained:
One of the biggest challenges is that the insurance industry is fundamentally reactive and slow to change. Many stakeholders are used to pricing risk after losses occur, rather than investing upfront to prevent them.
There’s also a behavioral challenge. Property owners often underestimate their own risk exposure, which makes proactive mitigation a harder sell.
We’ve addressed this by building strong partnerships with insurers, fire departments, and mitigation companies, and by grounding our approach in clear, data-driven outcomes.
When you can demonstrate meaningful premium reductions of often 30% or more while making properties safer, adoption becomes much easier.
How The Technology Has Evolved
When asked how RockRose Risk’s technology has evolved since launching, Engler said:
RockRose Risk has evolved into a highly automated, AI-enabled platform designed to modernize what has traditionally been a fragmented and reactive insurance process.
Early on, we focused on commercial properties so we could validate our underwriting and mitigation models at scale. As we grew, the technology evolved from simply assessing wildfire exposure to actively translating mitigation efforts into quantifiable risk reduction that insurers can confidently underwrite.
Today, AI plays a major role across the platform. We use machine learning-driven risk scoring, advanced wildfire modeling, geospatial and property-level analysis, and automated workflows to streamline everything from document collection to underwriting preparation and policy placement.
Our systems help synthesize inspection data, mitigation records, satellite and environmental inputs, and fire behavior science into a clear, data-backed risk profile that carriers can actually act on.
That evolution has been critical because it allows us to scale efficiently while also making insurance more reflective of real-world resilience.
Instead of relying on outdated assumptions or broad geographic scoring, we can provide underwriters with a much more dynamic and property-specific understanding of risk.
The end result is a faster, more transparent process that helps customers unlock meaningful premium savings and reinvest those savings into continued mitigation and long-term resilience.
Key Company Milestones
When asked about some of RockRose Risk’s most significant milestones, Engler highlighted:
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- Launching and scaling our commercial insurance offering across California, Nevada, and Colorado
- Building partnerships with 18+ insurance carriers
- Delivering 30-44% average premium reductions for clients
- Managing over $7 billion in insurable property value
- Raising a $9 million seed round led by Crosslink and Citrine Capital
- Launching a homeowners insurance product in California, including an automated California FAIR Plan quoting and binding tool
- Introducing Rosebud™, a purpose-built assessment rover equipped with cameras and lidar, designed to capture ground-level property conditions that satellite imagery and ZIP-code models cannot see
- Raising a $15 million Series A led by Crosslink Capital, with participation from Congruent Ventures and Nuveen.
Customer Success Story
When asked to share a specific customer success story, Engler said:
A great example is our work with the McCloud HOA community in North Lake Tahoe.
The community was facing rapidly increasing insurance premiums and fewer available coverage options despite already investing in wildfire mitigation efforts.
Like many communities in wildfire-prone regions, they were doing the right things but struggling to communicate that reduced risk effectively to insurers.
RockRose Risk partnered closely with the HOA to build a detailed, data-driven understanding of the property’s actual wildfire exposure.
We combined advanced wildfire risk modeling, onsite assessments, and expert analysis with the community’s documented mitigation work to create a comprehensive risk profile that underwriters could confidently evaluate.
In the first year, that process helped McCloud reduce premiums from more than $1.3 million to $913,000, a savings of over $400,000 annually. The community reinvested a portion of those funds into ongoing wildfire resilience projects, including defensible space and fuel reduction efforts. At the 2026 renewal, that continued investment delivered again, and premiums came down to $414,000, roughly 69% below where they started, with deductibles dropping from $250,000 to $25,000 and earthquake coverage doubling to $5 million.
Rather than treating the savings as a one-time win, McCloud has created a self-reinforcing cycle where mitigation investment generates premium savings, and those savings fund the next round of mitigation.
Funding And Growth
When asked about funding and revenue metrics, Engler revealed:
We’ve raised a total of $24 million across our seed and Series A rounds. The seed round of $9 million was led by Crosslink and Citrine Capital, and we recently closed a $15 million Series A led by Crosslink Capital, with participation from Congruent and Citrine Capital.
On the business side, our model is tied to gross written premium, as we earn a percentage of the policies we place.
We’ve seen strong early growth, including roughly 400% growth since our fundraise.
Total Addressable Market
When asked about the total addressable market RockRose Risk is pursuing, Engler explained:
We’re focused on catastrophe-exposed property markets, particularly in wildfire-prone regions across the US.
In the wildland-urban interface alone, there is an estimated $3.3 trillion in property value at risk, representing a massive opportunity to rethink how risk is managed and mitigated.
Competitive Differentiation
When asked what differentiates RockRose Risk from its competition, Engler said:
Traditional insurance brokers focus on finding cheaper policies within an increasingly expensive system.
RockRose Risk takes a different approach by reducing the underlying risk itself.
By combining detailed risk assessment, mitigation planning, and insurer partnerships, we’re able to deliver significantly larger and more sustainable savings.
Additionally, our technology allows us to operate more efficiently than traditional brokers, enabling us to pass more value back to customers.
This creates a model where property owners, insurers, and communities all benefit.
Future Goals
When discussing RockRose Risk’s future goals, Engler explained:
Our near-term focus is scaling our homeowners product in California, which we recently launched, and expanding into additional geographies and catastrophe perils beyond wildfire.
Beyond that, we’re working toward scaling community-level mitigation projects, where entire neighborhoods or regions can be de-risked simultaneously.
Longer term, the goal is to transform insurance into a proactive risk management system. One that systematically reduces losses and helps communities adapt to an increasingly volatile climate.
The Future Of Insurance
When invited to discuss another topic, Engler concluded:
One important point is that the insurance industry is at an inflection point.
Rising climate risk is making large parts of the country difficult, or impossible, to insure under the current model.
We believe the future of insurance isn’t just about transferring risk, but actively reducing it.
By aligning financial incentives with mitigation, we can make communities safer while also stabilizing the insurance market.
