I.H.123.Right Business.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)

沃伦·巴菲特：第四区域。（笑声）

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m David Levy (PH) from Newport Beach, California.

观众：我是来自加利福尼亚州纽波特海滩的大卫·利维（音）。

Berkshire has been investing in the property and casualty and reinsurance business.

伯克希尔一直在投资财产保险和再保险业务。

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?

我注意到，除了年金业务外，你们一直在回避人寿保险业务。你们是否计划投资人寿保险业务？

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.

另外，我还有一个问题，关于伯克希尔 A 股和 B 股的关系。去年，伯克希尔 B 股比 A 股有一点溢价。

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.

现在，伯克希尔 B 股的价格比 A 股低了大约 3% 到 4%。我还注意到，有些人在做空伯克希尔 A 股和 B 股。您能对此发表评论吗？

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.

沃伦·巴菲特：好的。关于人寿保险业务，我们并没有偏见。实际上，通过 General Re，我们在生命再保险业务上已经有了相当重要的涉足。正如你提到的，我们也涉及了一些年金业务。

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.

问题在于，人寿保险业务的利润并不高——你可以看看大公司的记录——而且这个领域的许多活动在某种程度上与权益相关。

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.

而查理和我从来不想从事为他人管理权益的业务。我的意思是，我们希望我们在权益上的唯一兴趣集中在伯克希尔·哈撒韦本身。所以，我们不想戴两顶帽子。

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?

我们永远不会进入共同基金管理业务或任何形式的投资管理业务，因为，如果我们管理着 200 亿或 300 亿美元的投资基金，并且我们有一个可以投入 10 亿美元的好主意，那么你知道我们该用谁的钱来投资？

So, we’d rather just be wearing one hat. And that we want that hat to be Berkshire Hathaway.

所以，我们宁愿只戴一顶帽子。而我们希望这顶帽子是伯克希尔·哈撒韦。

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.

我们也不想向别人承诺，为了收取 0.5% 或 1% 的管理费，他们可以获得我们的最佳投资想法，因为这些想法属于伯克希尔。如果我们做出其他承诺，那就是在误导别人。

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.

因此，任何涉及权益成分的业务——而这现在是人寿保险业务中很大的一部分——我们都不会感到舒服去参与。

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.

如果你看看定期寿险，我们研究过将其放到互联网上的可能性。它的定价——即使没有佣金——我们仍然觉得很难理解并盈利。

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.

但这是一个我们理解的业务。因此，如果我们认为有一种方式能够以合理的盈利水平来开展，我们会非常愿意进入人寿保险业务。

Charlie, do you want to comment on the life business before I get to the A versus B thing, or —

查理，在我谈论 A 股和 B 股问题之前，你想评论一下人寿保险业务吗，还是——

CHARLIE MUNGER: No.

查理·芒格：不需要。

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.

我们确实在做结构化结算业务，那有点像年金业务。而我们从事的人寿保险业务主要是年金，且以非常低的成本运作。

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 —

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，任何想要购买与权益无关的年金产品的人都应该访问我们的网站。在产品的安全性等权重方面，你会发现我们提供的是一个非常具有竞争力的产品，因为我们——

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.

这是一个低成本运作的业务。如果你是为了在 30 年后领取付款，那么你可以确定伯克希尔会支付给你，但你未必能确定其他一些机构能做到。所以，在这里我们有一个非常具有竞争力的产品，但这不是一个大业务。

2、《2013-05-04 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

I like their financial policies. I think the odds are good that their position is maintained in a strong way over time, but I don’t feel the same degree of conviction about that as I do about the BNSF railroad. I mean, you know, it’s very hard for me to think of anything that could go wrong with BNSF. I could think of some things that could go wrong with IBM.

我喜欢他们的财务政策。我认为他们的地位在长期内保持强劲的可能性很大，但我对这一点的信心没有我对 BNSF 铁路的信心那么强。我是说，你知道，我很难想到 BNSF 会出现什么问题。而我可以想到一些 IBM 可能会出现的问题。

They, incidentally, have a very large pension obligation. Now, they have a large pension fund, too, but you’re talking 75 or $80 billion of assets and liabilities that, you know, is a big — it is a big annuity company on the side.

顺便说一句，他们有非常大的养老金义务。现在，他们也有一个很大的养老金基金，但你谈论的是750亿到800亿美元的资产和负债，这在某种程度上相当于一家大型年金公司。

And you can have — balls can take funny bounces in the annuity field. I would rather they didn’t have that, but that is a fact that I take into consideration when I buy. They show the assets and liabilities of being roughly equal, but the liabilities are a lot more certain than the assets over time.

在年金领域，风险是不可预测的。我希望他们没有那种义务，但这是我在购买时考虑的一个事实。他们显示的资产和负债大致相等，但随着时间的推移，负债的确定性远高于资产。

Charlie? 查理？

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.

查理·芒格：是的。至少IBM的养老金计划拥有IBM的资源。假设你是一个大型人寿保险公司。现在，全球范围内的人寿保险公司都开始遭受极大的痛苦。

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.

在日本，他们同意支付 3%的利息，当然，一旦日本政策实施很长时间，就没有办法赚取 3%的利息。

A whole lot of once revered, secure places look unsecure now.

曾经被尊敬和认为安全的许多地方现在看起来不安全了。

And around Berkshire, you’ll notice the life operations are — where we have our own policies as distinguished from reinsurance — are pretty small, right?

在伯克希尔，你会注意到我们的人寿业务——我们拥有自己的保单，而不是再保险——相对较小，对吗？

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.

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。我们不喜欢在这个世界上提供期权，而人们往往——尤其是在有销售队伍推动的情况下——在寿险行业，他们倾向于给人们提供某些选择，这在某些情况下使他们付出了巨大的代价。

买人寿险，或者靠养老金账户养活的无论什么样的产品都不会有好的表现。

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.

你知道，你总是希望接受一个期权；你绝对不想提供一个期权。但人寿业务正好相反。

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.

实际上，抵押贷款业务——我和查理曾在储蓄贷款业务中工作。给某人提供一笔30年抵押贷款的想法是，如果这对你来说是一个好交易，他们可以明天取消，而如果对他们来说是个好交易，他们可以保留30年。

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.

那些是糟糕的工具。如果你要买房子，它们对你有好处，我建议你——我建议在座的每个人立即为他们能买得起的房子申请 30 年期抵押贷款。

If it’s a bad deal and rates go to 1 percent, you can refund it. 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.

如果这是个坏交易，利率降到1%，你可以再融资。如果利率升到6%或7%，也许你可以以70美分买回1美元。

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.

因此，寿险公司在过去几十年中进行了大量这样的业务，而很多公司正在付出代价，有些甚至还没有完全意识到问题究竟是什么。

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.

他们有点像在弹簧刀战斗中的那个人，你知道，另一个人用弹簧刀猛击他，那个人说“你没有碰我”，另一个人说，“等你试着摇头你就知道了。”嗯，这有点像一些保险公司目前的处境。

Charlie? Anything further, Charlie?

查理？还有其他的事吗，查理？

CHARLIE MUNGER: No, that’s gloomy enough.

查理·芒格：没有，那已经够悲观了。

3、《2025-04-30 Matt Levine.Picking up pennies in front of the souvenir penny-smushing machine》

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。”）

I.H.123.Right Business.Warren Buffett.Life Insurance

I.H.123.Right Business.Warren Buffett.Life Insurance

1、《1999-05-03 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

2、《2013-05-04 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

3、《2025-04-30 Matt Levine.Picking up pennies in front of the souvenir penny-smushing machine》

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