Larry Fink said rebuilding Los Angeles could take up to a decade

The fires mean the government will need to tackle homeowners’ insurance over the next four years as companies and consumers reckon with the destruction, Fink, a Los Angeles native, said in an interview with CNBC. He added that the fires mean that firms may need to redefine event risk in different parts of the country. 

“Homeowners’ insurance is becoming a larger and larger component of home ownership,” Fink said in the interview, airing after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday. “This is going to be one of the bigger issues we’re going to have to be tackling over the next four years. When you have whole neighborhoods destroyed and you have infrastructure and schools and supermarkets destroyed — this is not a one-year fix. This is going to be five, six, seven, maybe 10 years of fixing.”

Estimates for insurance losses from the fires have risen to as high as $40 billion. Parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties will continue to face “extreme fire danger” through at least Wednesday afternoon local time, though conditions may improve somewhat on Thursday as winds begin to shift, the National Weather Service said in a notice. The fires have killed at least 24 people and incinerated entire neighborhoods. 

BlackRock, which oversees $11.6 trillion on behalf of retail and institutional clients, said it managed $700 billion of insurance companies’ general account assets as of the end of the third quarter and has cited insurers as an increasingly important client base for the firm. BlackRock acquired infrastructure investor Global Infrastructure Partners in a $12.5 billion deal that closed in October.   

Fink said the fires are “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.”