One year on, Gallagher Re property specialists provide a deep dive into California's unprecedented wildfire risk, where an evolving peril meets a dynamic insurance market.
An intersection of climate, environmental, and human factors set the stage for a catastrophe of historic proportions — leading to a rapidly evolving risk landscape where severe, prolonged fire seasons are no longer a statistical fluke but a highly probable threat.
On top of this evolving landscape, the California (re)insurance market has undergone a series of significant reforms, including new regulation allowing for the use of catastrophe modeling in rate setting — a reform which is likely to have wide-reaching implications for carriers with wildfire exposure in the state.
As these reforms are enacted and the sector evolves to meet the challenges posed by today's fire risk, carriers who strategically approach the risk will be positioned to secure best-in-class placements and advance their business goals.
As the industry marks one year since the event, we explore:
- The changing risk landscape in California, including regional shifts in AAL between NorCal and SoCal
- A dynamic insurance market, including the impacts of Proposition 103 in risk assessment and rate setting
- The estimated event return period of the 2025 LA wildfires, demonstrating the compound impacts of multiple fire footprints
- Gallagher Re's wildfire offering, which correctly identified 100% of the properties within the January fire perimeters as 'Extreme' and provide clients with strategic insight to de-risk their book