Insurance Payments Now at $22.4B From LA Wildfires One Year Ago

Insurers have paid more than $22.4 billion on tens of thousands of claims from the Los Angles wildfires that broke out a year ago on Jan. 7.

The claims data, which comes from the California Department of Insurance, shows the number of claims rose to 42,121, with 94% fully or partially paid.

According to the CDI, 39,677 claims were partially paid under laws requiring advance payments to speed recovery.

The CDI’s figures represent actual claims paid as of Nov. 17, 2025.

“Insurers are committed to helping Californians recover and rebuild after the devastating wildfires in Southern California,” stated Denni Ritter, department vice president for state government relations with the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.

Driven mainly by January’s L.A. wildfires, as well as severe convective storms in the U.S., insured losses from natural catastrophes will surpass $100 billion mark in 2025 for the sixth consecutive year, according to a report from Swiss Re Institute.

The fires precipitated moves by several insurers to curtail or halt offering homeowners insurance in the wildfire-prone state, and prompted the state’s insurance regulator to initiate several changes to regulations to fast-track rate requests and use better catastrophe modeling to encourage carriers to return.

State Farm, California’s largest homeowners insurer, got approval for a 17% rate increase following billions of dollars in losses from the L.A. wildfires and a pullback on writing new policies in the state. State Farm upped its rate request in May.

The wildfires, which destroyed 11,000 homes, put a spotlight on the state’s already existing homeowners insurance crisis. In another brewing battle over the impact of the fires, a few of the victims of wildfires have asked California Gov. Gavin Newsom to call for the resignation of California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara over reforms Lara pushed that were designed to help ease the state’s homeowners insurance crisis.

The calls for Lara’s resignation followed a New York Times article that the agreement between Lara and several insurers, intended to keep carriers from continuing to withdraw from the wildfire-prone state, enabled carriers to drop tens of thousands of policyholders ahead of the L.A. fires.

Insured losses for the wildfires are estimated to be between $30 billion to $40 billion. Several insurers, including State Farm, have reported paying more than $1 billion in claims.

Top photo: 2025 Eaton Fire. Source: CalFire.

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