Los Angeles following the devastating wildfires.
The deadly blazes have already claimed the lives of at least 24 people and have been estimated to cause upwards of $40 billion of damage.
LA’s ritzy Pacific Palisades neighborhood is all but destroyed, while the neighboring coastal community of Malibu was badly hit by the blazes.
Altadena, which sits northeast of Downtown LA, was also devastated.
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— this is not a one-year fix. This is going to be five, six, seven, maybe 10 years of fixing.’
More than 12,000 structures have been burned by the fires, several of which are still raging.
Fink added that the government will need to get involved with homeowners’ insurance as consumers reckon with the devastation.
‘Homeowners’ insurance is becoming a larger and larger component of home ownership,’ he said.
His company handles $11.6 trillion on behalf of retail and institutional clients and oversaw $700 billion of insurance companies’ cash as of the end of the third quarter.
BlackRock has also said that insurers are an increasingly important part of their client base.
For Fink, a Los Angeles native, the fires have taken on a personal significance. He described the blazes as, ‘horrible to watch’.
‘I used to hike the Santa Monica mountains all the time; it was one of my pleasures growing up, looking for snakes and reptiles as a kid, walking through the chaparral,’ he said.
‘I was there during the great Bel Air fires, but we’ve never seen destruction like this.’
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and then added last year that it would stop covering 72,000 homes across the state due to the growing frequency and severity of wildfires.
Several celebrities are among those who have lost their homes as entire neighborhoods have been flattened by the fires.
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Even if residents are still covered by insurance, they could face a $115billion shortfall due to insurance companies likely only covering $20billion of the $135billion in estimated losses.
‘The concern isn’t whether insurance companies will pay out for damage but rather how much and how long it will take,’ Amy Bach, the executive director of United Policyholders, a California-based nonprofit consumer group, told NBC.
‘For the people who lose their homes in these wildfires, there will be fights over coverage.’
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