I.H.106.Warren Buffett.Life Insurance
服务弱势群体的往往是骗子，最终有问题的也不是骗子，被骗是一种需求。
1、《1999-05-03 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
58. Two reasons Berkshire isn’t selling life insurance
伯克希尔不从事人寿保险的两个原因
WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 4. (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT：4 区。（笑声）
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m David Levy (PH) from Newport Beach, California. Berkshire has been investing in the property and casualty and reinsurance business. I notice, except for annuities, you’ve been avoiding the life insurance business. Do you have — do you anticipate investing in the life insurance business? Also, I have a second question, and that is the relationship of Berkshire A and Berkshire B. Last year there was a slight premium for Berkshire B over Berkshire A. About now, Berkshire B is selling at about a 3 to 4 percent discount. I also notice that certain people are shorting Berkshire A and Berkshire B. I wonder if you could comment on that.
AUDIENCE MEMBER：我叫 David Levy (PH)，来自 Newport Beach, California。Berkshire 一直在投资财产意外险和再保险业务。我注意到，除了年金以外，你们基本上都在回避寿险业务。你们有没有——或者说，是否预期今后会投资寿险业务？另外我还有第二个问题，关于 Berkshire A 和 Berkshire B 之间的关系。去年 Berkshire B 相对 Berkshire A 还有一点溢价。现在 Berkshire B 大概是以 3%–4% 的折价交易。我也注意到，有些人在做空 Berkshire A 和 Berkshire B。想请你就这些现象评论一下。
WARREN BUFFETT: Sure. On the life business, we have no bias against the life business, we just — we are in the life reinsurance business in a fairly significant way through General Re. As you mentioned, we’ve done a little on annuities. The problem with the life business is that it isn’t very profitable — and you can look at the records of the big companies on that — and that a lot of the activity in the area is, in some way, equity-related. And Charlie and I have never wanted to get in the business of managing equities for other people. I mean, we want our sole interest on equities to be Berkshire Hathaway itself. So, we do not want to wear two hats. We would never go into the mutual fund management business or any kind of investment management business because, if we were to be managing 20 or $30 billion in the investment management business, and we get a good idea that we can put a billion dollars in, you know, whose money do we put in it? So, we’d rather just be wearing one hat. And that we want that hat to be Berkshire Hathaway.
WARREN BUFFETT：当然可以。关于寿险业务，我们对寿险本身没有偏见，我们只是——实际上我们已经通过 General Re 以相当大的规模在做寿险再保险。正如你提到的，我们也做了一点年金业务。问题在于，寿险业务本身的盈利能力并不强——你可以去看看那些大型寿险公司的历史记录——而且现在这个领域里有很大一块业务，在某种程度上都跟 equity（股权投资）挂钩。Charlie 和我从来都不想去干那种“帮别人管理股票资产”的生意。我们的意思是，我们在股权投资上唯一想投入精力的对象就是 Berkshire Hathaway 自己。所以我们不想一人头上戴两顶帽子。我们永远不会去做 mutual fund（共同基金）管理，或者任何形式的 investment management business（投资管理业务）。因为如果我们在投资管理业务里管着两三百亿美元，然后突然找到一个可以投 10 亿美元的好点子，那你说我们该用谁的钱去投？所以我们更愿意只戴一顶帽子，而且那顶帽子就是 Berkshire Hathaway。
And we don’t want to be promising other people that for, you know, half of one percent or one percent fee that they’re going to get our best ideas, because those ideas belong to Berkshire and we’d be misleading people if we promised otherwise. So, anything that involves an equity component to it — and that’s a big part of what’s going on in the life business now — it’s just something we wouldn’t be comfortable being involved with. If you look at term life insurance, we’ve looked at that, in terms of putting it on the internet. It’s — it is priced at rates that we find very hard, even with the absence of commissions, to make sense. But it’s a business we understand. So, we’re — we’d be perfectly willing to be in the life insurance business if we thought there was — if we had a way of doing it where we thought there was reasonable profitability attached to it. Charlie, do you want to comment on the life business before I get to the A versus B thing, or —
而且我们也不想去向别人承诺，说只收你比如万分之五、千分之一的管理费，就会把我们“最好的投资想法”给你用——因为这些想法属于 Berkshire，我们如果作出这种承诺，就是在误导别人。因此，只要是带有股权成分的东西——而这恰恰是现在寿险业务中很大的一块——我们就不会觉得参与其中是舒服的。如果你看看 term life insurance（定期寿险），我们也研究过，甚至考虑过通过网络来销售。问题是，在如今的定价水平下，即使我们完全不付佣金，这个业务的价格水平依然让我们很难看出有合理的利润空间。但从业务本身来说，这是我们理解得很清楚的一门生意。所以，如果我们能找到一种做法，能让我们在寿险业务中获得我们认为“合理的盈利水平”，我们是完全愿意去做寿险的。Charlie，在我讲 A 股和 B 股之前，你要不要先评论一下寿险业务？
CHARLIE MUNGER: No. We do those structured settlements. That is sort of like the annuity business. And the life business we’re doing is mostly annuities and on a very low-cost basis.
CHARLIE MUNGER：不用。我们现在在做那些 structured settlements（结构性赔付），这其实有点类似年金业务。我们现在在寿险相关领域做的事情，大部分都是年金，而且是以极低成本的方式在做。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. Anyone that wants to buy a non-equity-related annuity should go to our website and find, in terms of the — weighting for the safety of the product and everything, you’ll find a very, very competitive product because we — It’s a low-cost operation. And if you’re buying it to get paid 30 years from now, you are certain to get paid from Berkshire and you’re not necessarily certain to get paid from various other entities. So, we’ve got a very competitive product there, but it’s not a big business.
WARREN BUFFETT：是的。任何想买一份不含股权成分的年金的人，都应该上我们的网站去看看。从产品安全性等维度综合衡量，你会发现我们提供的是一款非常有竞争力的产品，因为我们——这是一个低成本运作的业务。如果你买这份年金是为了在 30 年后拿到钱，那么你可以肯定，来自 Berkshire 的付款是一定会实现的，而来自其他一些机构的付款，就未必有同样的确定性。所以在这一块我们确实有非常有竞争力的产品，但这门业务的规模并不大。
2、《2013-05-04 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. Well, at least the IBM pension plan has the resources of IBM. Suppose you’re a big life insurance company now. All over the world, the life insurance companies have started to suffer the tortures of hell. In Japan, they agreed to pay 3 percent interest, and, of course, there was no way to earn 3 percent interest once the Japanese policies had been in place a long time. A whole lot of once revered, secure places look unsecure now. And around Berkshire, you’ll notice the life operations are — where we have our own policies as distinguished from reinsurance — are pretty small, right?
CHARLIE MUNGER：对。至少 IBM 的养老金计划背后还有 IBM 这家公司的资源作支撑。假设你现在是一家大型寿险公司——你会发现，全世界的寿险公司都开始经历“地狱般的折磨”。在日本，它们当年承诺支付 3% 的利率，而一旦这些日本保单存续了很长时间，当然就根本不可能再赚到 3% 的利率了。很多曾经被敬畏、被认为非常安全的地方，如今看起来都不那么安全了。你们注意一下，在 Berkshire 体系里，我们的寿险业务——指我们自己直接出保单、而不是做再保险的那部分——规模一直都很小，对吧？
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. We do not like giving options in this world, and people tend to — well, particularly they’ve got a sales force pushing them on, as you have in the life insurance industry. They have tended to give people options that have, in certain cases, cost them huge amounts of money. It’s — you know, you always want to accept an option; you never want to give an option. But the life business is in just the reverse side of that. Actually, the mortgage business — I mean, you know, Charlie and I were in the savings and loan business. The idea of giving somebody a 30-year mortgage where they can — if it’s a good deal for you — they can call it off tomorrow, and if it’s a good deal for them, they keep it for 30 years. Those are terrible instruments. They’re good for you if you’re buying a house, and I recommend that you — I recommend everybody in this room get a 30-year mortgage immediately on a house for all they can. If it’s a bad deal and rates go to 1 percent, you can refund it.
WARREN BUFFETT：对。我们不喜欢在这个世界上“卖出期权”（给别人选择权）。但人们往往会——尤其是寿险行业那样有销售队伍不断推动——倾向于把“选择权”给到客户，而在某些情况下，这会让他们付出巨额代价。你知道，一般原则是：你永远想“买入/拿到一个期权”，你永远不想“卖出/给出一个期权”。但寿险业务恰恰是反过来的。其实抵押贷款业务也是——你知道，Charlie 和我当年做过储贷行业。给别人一笔 30 年期按揭：如果这笔交易对你（放贷方）有利，对方明天就可以把它提前还掉；如果这笔交易对他（借款方）有利，他就会把它留足 30 年。这种工具很糟糕。它对买房的人很有利——我建议你们，我建议在座每个人都立刻给自己弄一笔 30 年期按揭，而且额度尽可能大。因为如果这是一笔“对你不利的交易”，利率后来降到 1%，你可以去再融资（把旧的贷掉，换更低利率）。
If rates go to 6 or 7 percent, maybe you can buy it back for 70 cents on the dollar or something of the sort. So the life companies have engaged in that big time — big, big time — in the last few decades, and a lot of them are paying the price, and some of them haven’t even realized exactly quite what the problems are. They’re kind of like the fellow in the switchblade fight, you know, where the other guy takes a big swipe at him with a switchblade and the fellow says, “You didn’t touch me,” and the other guy says, “Well, just wait until you try and shake your head.” Well, that’s a little bit like where some of the life companies are right now. Charlie? Anything further, Charlie?
如果利率升到 6% 或 7%，你甚至可能用“每 1 美元只花 0.7 美元”的价格把这笔东西买回来（大概就是这个意思）。所以寿险公司在过去几十年里把这类事情做得很大——非常大——而很多公司正在为此付出代价，有些公司甚至还没有完全意识到问题到底在哪里。它们有点像那个参加弹簧刀斗殴的人：对方用弹簧刀狠狠划了一下，他还说“你没碰到我”，对方说“等你想摇头的时候再说吧”。嗯，现在一些寿险公司差不多就是这个状态。Charlie？你还有补充吗，Charlie？
CHARLIE MUNGER: No, that’s gloomy enough.
CHARLIE MUNGER：不，这已经够悲观了。
Picking up pennies in front of the souvenir penny-smushing machine
在纪念币压扁机前捡便士
If you buy term life insurance, it will probably be underpriced. The annual premium that you pay for 20 years of life insurance is less than 1/20th of the actuarial value of the insurance; the insurance company will, in expectation, lose money over the life of the trade. Why does the insurance company do this apparently irrational trade? Because the insurance company has actuarial data not just about when you’ll die, but also about when you will stop paying premiums. And it turns out that insurance customers are also pretty irrational: They tend to let insurance policies lapse sub-optimally; they stop paying the premiums before the policies expire, so the policies are canceled and the insurers keep the money. The insurance company will offer you a positive-expected-value trade for you, because it expects that most of its customers will not make positive-expected-value choices. But if you are very rational, this is a good deal for you. (Not financial advice!)
如果你购买定期寿险，它很可能被低估了。你为 20 年期寿险支付的年度保费不到该保单精算价值的二十分之一；从期望值上看，保险公司在整笔交易期间会亏损。保险公司为何要做这种看似不理性的交易？因为它掌握的不仅是你大概的寿命，还知道你何时会停止缴费。事实证明，投保人也相当不理性：他们往往在并不理想的时点让保单失效；在保单到期前就停止缴费，结果保单被取消、保险公司留下已收保费。保险公司之所以愿意给你一笔预期正收益的交易，是因为它预期多数客户不会做出正期望的选择。但如果你足够理性，这对你就是一笔好买卖。（非投资建议！）
If you are extra super rational, you might find a way to exploit this, by systematically buying a lot of life insurance on a diversified portfolio of other people, paying the premiums optimally, and getting more money in death benefits than you pay in premiums. (While, preferably, not dying yourself.) This is roughly speaking called “stranger-originated life insurance,” or STOLI, and it was a real trade for a while; we talked about it a couple of times last year because apparently Apollo Global Management Inc. owned some of it.
如果你理性到“超神”级别，可能会系统性地利用这一点：为一篮子互不相关的他人购买大量寿险，按最优方式缴费，最后领取的死亡赔付总额超过所缴保费（前提是你本人最好别死）。这大致被称为“陌生人发起寿险”（STOLI），曾经确实存在这样的交易；去年我们谈到过几次，因为据说阿波罗全球管理公司持有过一些此类保单。
I am describing features of the insurance market, but there are lots of things like this. The model generalizes broadly. The model is roughly “if you underprice a product, relying on your experience of irrational consumer behavior, you might find yourself selling millions of dollars of it to Apollo, and they aren’t irrational.”
我在描述的是保险市场的特征，但类似现象比比皆是。该模型具有很强的普适性：如果你因为依赖对消费者非理性行为的经验而把产品定价过低，你最终可能发现自己卖出了数百万美元的产品给阿波罗之类的机构——而他们可一点也不非理性。
有组织的羊毛党。
Anyway here’s a great email I got from reader Joe Morse:
总之，下面是一位读者乔·莫尔斯发来的精彩邮件：
I recently took my kids to the American Museum of Natural History in NYC and we happened upon one of those machines where you can turn a crank and flatten a penny to imprint it with a few museum-related image to take home as a souvenir. It cost 50 cents to use, plus a penny.
最近我带孩子去了纽约的美国自然历史博物馆，偶然看到那种可以转动曲柄，把便士压扁、印上博物馆图案作纪念的小机器。使用一次需花 50 美分外加 1 便士。
Next to the crank was a change machine. But the change machine didn’t just give you quarters, oh no. If you put in a dollar bill, it would give you four quarters and two pennies! So presumably if I put in 100 $1 bills, it would give me $102 back (in quarters and pennies). I’m not sure how much change the machine actually holds, and as an arbitrage opportunity, it might be difficult to reproduce at a large enough scale to pay for my family’s museum tickets. Fortunately I got us a membership, so I have a whole year to find out how many quarters and pennies are in there. I’ll keep you posted.
曲柄旁边还有一台兑换机。但这台兑换机并不仅仅给你四枚 25 美分硬币，不不不。如果你塞进一张 1 美元纸币，它会吐出四枚 25 美分硬币再加两枚 1 便士！所以理论上，如果我塞进 100 张 1 美元，它会返还 102 美元（以 25 美分和 1 便士形式）。我不确定机器里有多少零钱，作为套利机会，或许难以放大到足以支付我家博物馆门票的规模。好在我已经办了会员卡，有一整年时间研究里面到底有多少 25 美分和 1 便士。后续我会汇报。
A change machine that gives you $1.02 for $1 is an irrational change machine, but if you put it next to the machine that charges $0.50 to stamp a penny, it’s fine. You know exactly what people are going to do with that $1.02. But what if they don’t?
一台用 1 美元换回 1.02 美元的兑换机显然不理性，但如果它紧挨着那台收你 0.50 美元来压扁便士的机器，那就没问题了——你完全知道人们会拿这 1.02 美元干什么。可万一他们不按套路出牌呢？
(Oh, obviously the problem is scale: Even if you can do this 10 times a minute, which seems fast for a change machine, that works out to a profit of $12 per hour, which is closer to “a minimum-wage job” than “an arbitrage.” Morse adds: “One of many potential downsides is that if I spend the duration of our museum visit feeding dollar bills into the change machine, I won’t be able to supervise my kids’ gift shop purchases, the cost of which will almost certainly exceed my profits.”)
（哦，显而易见的问题在于规模：即便你每分钟能操作 10 次——对于兑换机来说已经很快了——利润也只有每小时 12 美元，更像一份“最低工资的工作”而非真正的套利。莫尔斯补充道：“潜在缺点之一是，如果我整个参观时间都在往兑换机里塞 1 美元纸币，就没法看管孩子们在礼品店的消费，而那花费几乎肯定会超过我的利润。”）
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