Lloyd’s this week said it will lose $2.3 billion from the Los Angeles wildfires in January, adding to the number of companies that have paid out more than $1 billion in losses from the catastrophe.

The company revealed the losses in a partial release on its yearend results for 2024. The company, which plans to release the full results on March 20, also announced that gross written premium rose by 6.5% to £55.5bn, (or $71.8 billion), reflecting 8.5% growth, primarily in the property and reinsurance segments which had a strong underwriting performance in the year.

“Whilst not included in the FY24 result, based on the information currently available, we estimate the net loss to the market for the Californian wildfires to be approximately $2.3bn,” Lloyd’s stated in the release out this week.

Several carriers and reinsurers have reported billion-dollar plus losses from the L.A. wildfires, which have mounted to $6.9 billion in claims reported so far.

Munich Re said in late February that it expects about 1.2 billion euros ($1.26 billion) in claims resulting from the Los Angeles wildfires, representing the biggest loss reported at that time by a single European reinsurer for the wildfires.

A few big reinsurers took sizeable hits, but those were far less than Lloyd’s and Munich Re. Zurich Insurance Group AG said it is expecting pretax losses of $200 million from the January wildfires. Swiss Re said claims from the wildfires would be less than $700 million and would impact its first quarter results.

The Travelers Companies Inc. in mid-February said it will lose an estimated $1.7 billion from the wildfires, Allstate Corp. on Jan. 5 reported losses in excess of $1 billion from the fires and State Farm reported more than $1 billion paid out to customers. Chubb said the wildfires are expected to cost the insurer $1.5 billion in the first quarter.

The fires destroyed thousands of properties, most from the two largest blazes (the Eaton and Palisades fires). At one point, there were five fires fanned by hurricane-force winds burning around the L.A. area.

Topics
Catastrophe
Natural Disasters
Wildfire
Excess Surplus
Louisiana
Lloyd’s