Finance
Millions of homeowners don’t have homeowners insurance due to high costs
7.4% of all homeowners have opted not to have insurance to protect their home. (iStock)
Homeowners insurance is required in many states, particularly when you have a mortgage, but not every homeowner has the insurance they need. More than six million homeowners in the U.S. don’t have homeowners insurance, according to a Consumer Federation of America (CFA) report.
An estimated 7.4% of all homeowners are uninsured throughout the country, leaving $1.6 trillion in assets unprotected, the report found. The high cost of homeowners insurance is causing homeowners to go without insurance.
“Many consumers are struggling to afford rising premiums and must go without homeowners insurance,” CFA Director of Housing Sharon Cornelissen said in the report.
Homeowners with lower earnings are more likely to avoid getting insurance. Those who earn under $50,000 are twice as likely to lack adequate coverage or coverage at all.
Additionally, certain demographic groups forgo insurance more than others. Among Native American homeowners, 22% don’t have insurance, 14% of Hispanic homeowners go without insurance and 11% of Black homeowners have no insurance. Homeowners living in the Houston and Miami areas were also more likely to be uninsured, according to the report.
“That [not having insurance] puts them at risk of losing everything. One storm or wildfire means they have to go into deep financial debt to repair their home, live with unsafe and inadequate housing, or even become homeless,” Cornelissen said.
To find homeowners insurance that actually fits your budget, consider using Credible’s marketplace to compare rates in minutes.
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Legislation could cut homeowners insurance costs
Due to the homeowners insurance crisis plaguing the country, certain states are trying to get legislation passed to lower insurance rates.
In Florida, particularly Broward County, a commissioner is seeking to pass legislation that would lower rates for Floridians by as much as 25%. Florida has some of the highest premiums in the country due to more frequent natural disasters and higher rates of fraud.
The legislation, originally introduced by Rep. Jared Moskowitz is titled the Natural Disaster Reinsurance Plan. Since Florida is significantly impacted by natural disasters, this program could save homeowners hundreds in monthly insurance premiums. If passed, the legislation would help Florida and other states that choose to opt-in scale back the need for insurance companies to purchase reinsurance from other providers.
In short, companies buy insurance from outside companies to protect themselves from risk and pass on the higher premiums to homeowners. The bill would limit this need, saving insurance companies money, as well as those they insure.
If you need a new insurance company, Credible can help you compare rates from multiple companies, potentially saving you hundreds on homeowners insurance each year.
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Auto insurance rates also skyrocketing
Drivers in most states are also seeing their monthly premiums reach all-time highs. The motor vehicle index portion of inflation rose 0.9% in February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
Over the last year, the index increased by 20.6%, indicating a spike in auto insurance costs for the entire country. The rising cost of used cars and trucks added to this index increase. Its own index increased by 0.5% from January to February.
Last year, 31% of drivers saw their car insurance increase, J.D. Power found. Rates increased 15.5%, on average, largely due to substantial losses insurance companies faced.
“Overall customer satisfaction with auto insurers has plummeted this year, as insurers and drivers come face to face with the realities of the economy,” said Mark Garrett, J.D. Power director of insurance intelligence.
Drivers are growing increasingly frustrated with the insurance industry as companies pull out of states entirely.
“While insurers are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to balancing profitability with customer experience, there are several ways they can blunt the negative effects of rising costs, such as proactively offering customers UBI alternatives, clearly signaling and explaining necessary rate increases and consistently delivering on brand promises to instill trust,” Garrett said.
Car insurance rates vary based on a variety of factors — from your credit score to driving habits. Use Credible’s free tools to shop around and lower your car insurance premium today.
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Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has invested heavily in its fast-growing international business as growth slows for its China-focused Taobao and Tmall business.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
BEIJING — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba‘s international arm on Wednesday launched an updated version of its artificial intelligence-powered translation tool that, it says, is better than products offered by Google, DeepL and ChatGPT.
That’s based on an assessment of Alibaba International’s new model, Marco MT, by translation benchmark framework Flores, the Chinese company said.
Alibaba’s fast-growing international unit released the AI translation product as an update to one unveiled about a year ago, which it says already has 500,000 merchant users. Sellers based in one country can use the translation tool to create product pages in the language of the target market.
The new version is based only on large language models, allowing it to draw on contextual clues such as culture or industry-specific terms, Kaifu Zhang, vice president of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group and head of the business’ artificial intelligence initiative, told CNBC in an interview Tuesday.
“The idea is that we want this AI tool to help the bottom line of the merchants, because if the merchants are doing well, the platform will be doing well,” he said.
Large language models power artificial intelligence applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which can also translate text. The models, trained on massive amounts of data, can generate humanlike responses to user prompts.
Alibaba’s translation tool is based on its own model called Qwen. The product supports 15 languages: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian.
Zhang said he expects “substantial demand” for the tool from Europe and the Americas. He also expects emerging markets to be a significant area of use.
When users of Alibaba.com — a site for suppliers to sell to businesses — are categorized by country, developing countries account for about half of the top 20 active AI tool users, Zhang said.
Chinese companies have increasingly looked abroad for growth opportunities, especially e-commerce merchants. PDD Holdings‘ Temu, fast fashion seller Shein and ByteDance’s TikTok are among the recent global market entrants. Many China-based merchants also sell on Amazon.com.
Contextual clues
Since Alibaba launched the first version of its AI translation tool last fall, the company said merchants have used it for more than 100 million product listings. Similar to other AI-based services, the basic pricing charges merchants by the amount of translated text.
Zhang declined to share how much the updated version would cost. He said it was included in some service bundles for merchants wanting simple exposure to overseas users.
His thinking is that contextual translation makes it much more likely that consumers decide to buy. He shared an example in which a colloquial Chinese description for a slipper would have turned off English-speaking consumers if it was only translated literally, without getting at the implied meaning.
“The updated translation engine is going to make Double 11 a better experience for consumers because of more authentic expression,” Zhang said, in reference to the Alibaba-led shopping festival that centers on Nov. 11 each year.
Alibaba’s international business includes platforms such as AliExpress and Lazada, which primarily targets Southeast Asia. The international unit reported sales growth of 32% to $4.03 billion in the quarter ended June from a year ago.
That’s in contrast to a 1% year-on-year drop in sales to $15.6 billion for Alibaba’s main Taobao and Tmall e-commerce business, which has focused on China.
The Taobao app is also popular with consumers in Singapore. In September, the app launched an AI-powered English version for users in the country.
Nomura analysts expect that Alibaba’s international revenue slowed slightly to 29% year-on-year growth in the quarter ended September, while operating losses narrowed, according to an Oct. 10 report. Alibaba has yet to announce when it will release quarterly earnings.
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