The property/casualty insurance sector has limited exposure to the debt of troubled California utility PG&E Corp., according to a briefing released Wednesday by A.M. Best Co. Inc.

Approximately 10% of insurers have exposure to PG&E bonds by number of entities, Best reported.

The property/casualty segment, however, holds just 10% of the industry’s entire holdings, while the life/annuity segment holds 88%, the Best briefing said. Two-thirds of these entities have exposures totaling less than 1% of capital and surplus, Best said.

In total, the insurance industry holds between roughly one-fifth to one-quarter of the company’s debt, or about $4.1 billion.

PG&E faces liability questions for the California wildfires connected to its distribution lines and has seen “about half its market value, roughly $12 billion, vanish in little more than a week,” Best reported.

“At issue is whether utilities should continue to be held liable for damages caused by wildfires linked to their power lines, even if the companies did nothing wrong,” Best said.

“Lobbying continues to support the governor’s call to loosen the liability standard, formally known as inverse condemnation, to allow a ‘more equitable apportionment of costs between utilities and insurers,’” Best added.

The exposure to the property/casualty segment does not rise to the level of being material, according to Sridhar Manyem, director of industry research and analytics for Best in Oldwick, New Jersey.

“That’s not a material exposure at all,” Mr. Manyem told Business Insurance. “I don’t think we see any property/casualty companies that have outsized concentration to the PG&E debt.”

Although questions of liability may in fact come into play, Mr. Manyem said events are in the “very early stages, even in terms of containment and loss assessment,” adding there is “a lot of speculation going on.”

The president of the California Public Utilities Commission, however, has already called for expanding an existing investigation into PG&E, giving the issue a potential political dimension.