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Los Angeles fire survivor is told State Farm’s $900K check on hold due to insufficient funds (calmatters.org)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/california@lemmy.world
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[–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

This was done earlier this year, The Institute & Faculty of Actuaries published a paper on the true risk climate has on the world economy. Insurance companies are most likely only starting to get this information and large payouts from the wildfire's, the hurricanes and the flooding is most likely already pushing the companies to insolvency. You can of course move risk around with re-insurance and spun out independent insurance companies but the risk to overwhelming the entire system is becoming higher and higher each year. I wouldn't be surprised if the specific account used for the CA wildfire payouts was empty and overdrawn and State Farm was caught off guard by that and had to do some serious amount of moving money around to fill it back up. Enough where it took a couple of days to come up with the cash, that in itself is really scary.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    The problem is not risk. It is cost. Climate change means that the cost maintaining human infrastructure where we built it has become higher than we want to pay. And regulators and politicians have prevented insurance companies to raise rates to match the increased cost.

    Ultimately, there are 3 ways out of this:

    1. Move. Either have a government buy out program for at risk areas; or stop insuring new construction or substantial repairs. Your home was totalled by a hurricane for the second time this decade? Here's your insurance payout; but don't rebuild there because we will not insure you

    2. Build infrastructure to reduce costs. This could be more regionally appropriate building codes. Forest management. Waterworks. If we are willing to spend the resources, we have a surprising ability to bend local environments to our will

    3. Pay the increased cost.

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