California officials on Thursday ordered mortgage lenders, including banks and credit unions, to report how they have handled insurance payouts owed to survivors of the 2025 Los Angeles-area wildfires.

The order, issued by the California Business and Consumer Services Agency and the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI), the state's financial regulator, aims to accelerate the release of insurance proceeds that lenders hold before passing them on to homeowners. That middle step is a byproduct of standard mortgage servicing: when a home with a loan on it is damaged, insurance claim payments are typically made out to both the homeowner and the lender, which then oversees how and when the funds are released. The DFPI said it has received more than 160 complaints about payment delays or other issues since January 2025. Lenders have been given two weeks to submit their reports.

"It's unacceptable that after running through a gauntlet of paperwork to file insurance claims, some wildfire survivors still have not gotten access to the funds they need to rebuild," said Rohit Chopra, secretary of the Business and Consumer Services Agency.

The Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed more than 16,000 homes and other structures as they tore through residential neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles. Very few of those homes have been rebuilt since.

Concerns about slow disbursements are not new. In July, Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote a letter to bankers' associations and credit unions, noting that fire victims rebuilding their homes had reported that lenders sometimes hold on to insurance payouts for weeks before releasing them. He directed the state to collect data on lenders that take longer than 10 days to distribute insurance proceeds and that fail to develop a plan to speed up those payments.

Newsom signed a law last year requiring banks and credit unions to pay homeowners interest on insurance payments they hold.

The governor said the state is taking crucial action Thursday to support families and business owners as they rebuild.

"The last thing survivors need is unnecessary red tape, delays, and barriers standing between them and the relief they deserve," Newsom said in a statement.

More broadly, questions over who should bear the financial costs of California's wildfires have persisted throughout Newsom's nearly eight years as governor. He took office in 2019, months after the deadliest and most destructive fire in state history, and immediately had to confront the question of who should cover the costs of fires caused by utility equipment. In his final legislative session as governor, Newsom pushed a plan that would have required home insurers to shoulder more of the cost, but the deal fell apart after lawmakers failed to agree on a solution.

DFPI Commissioner KC Mohseni said the department will take action, potentially including fines, against banks and credit unions that unnecessarily delay insurance payouts. The reports are intended to give regulators a lender-by-lender record of where those delays are occurring — the kind of data collection Newsom sought in July.

"It is critical that as homeowners and families continue to rebuild and recover, lenders do not stand in their way," Mohseni said in a statement.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com: Fortune