巴菲特致股东的信（1997年）⑤巨灾再保险业务

Super-Cat Insurance

Occasionally, however, the cost of our float will spike severely. That will occur because of our heavy involvement in the super-cat business, which by its nature is the most volatile of all insurance lines. In this operation, we sell policies that insurance and reinsurance companies purchase in order to limit their losses when mega-catastrophes strike. Berkshire is the preferred market for sophisticated buyers: When the "big one" hits, the financial strength of super-cat writers will be tested, and Berkshire has no peer in this respect.

巨灾再保险业务

然而有时候我们浮存金的成本也会突然大幅上扬，主要的原因在于我们从事的巨灾再保险业务，本身属于保险业中变动最大的一种险种。从事这类业务，我们将保单卖给其它保险公司与再保公司，以分散他们面临超大型意外灾害所可能承担的风险，事实上，伯克希尔是有经验的公司最喜爱往来的对象，因为他们深深知道当有“大事”真正发生时，所有巨灾保险的承保业者都会面临财务实力的严峻挑战，而伯克希尔无疑的是同业之最。

Since truly major catastrophes are rare occurrences, our super-cat business can be expected to show large profits in most years -- and to record a huge loss occasionally. In other words, the attractiveness of our super-cat business will take a great many years to measure. What you must understand, however, is that a truly terrible year in the super-cat business is not a possibility -- it's a certainty. The only question is when it will come.

而由于真正重大的灾害并不是每年都发生，所以我们的巨灾业务极有可能在连续几年赚大钱后，突然又发生重大的损失，换句话说，我们这项巨灾保险业务到底有多吸引人可能要花上好几年才有办法看得清，不过大家必须明了，所谓的重大损失的年头不是可能会发生，而是肯定会发生，唯一的问题是它什么时候会发生。

Last year, we were very lucky in our super-cat operation. The world suffered no catastrophes that caused huge amounts of insured damage, so virtually all premiums that we received dropped to the bottom line. This pleasant result has a dark side, however. Many investors who are "innocents" -- meaning that they rely on representations of salespeople rather than on underwriting knowledge of their own -- have come into the reinsurance business by means of purchasing pieces of paper that are called "catastrophe bonds." The second word in this term, though, is an Orwellian misnomer: A true bond obliges the issuer to pay; these bonds, in effect, are contracts that lay a provisional promise to pay on the purchaser.

去年我们在巨灾业务的表现还算不错，全世界一整年都没有发生足以造成重大损失的大型灾害，也就是说基本上一整年收到的所有保费都自动落到我们的口袋里。只是事情并不如想象中完美，有许多不知情的投资人，并非基于本身对于保险承保的认识，而是在业务人员的怂恿推销之下，进场买进一种叫做“巨灾债券”的有价证券，事实上这根本就是一个误导性的名词，真正的债券是指到期后发行人有义务支付债券款，然而这种债券，本质上其实是一种给予买方一种附有条件限制的承诺支付合约。

This convoluted arrangement came into being because the promoters of the contracts wished to circumvent laws that prohibit the writing of insurance by entities that haven't been licensed by the state. A side benefit for the promoters is that calling the insurance contract a "bond" may also cause unsophisticated buyers to assume that these instruments involve far less risk than is actually the case.

这种拐弯抹角的做法，主要是推销人为了规避，禁止未经政府许可的实体从事承保业务，而衍生出来的产品，而业者之所以将它取名叫做债券的原因在于这样的做法可以吸引不知情的投资人，承担远比其表面上还高的许多的风险。

Truly outsized risks will exist in these contracts if they are not properly priced. A pernicious aspect of catastrophe insurance, however, makes it likely that mispricing, even of a severe variety, will not be discovered for a very long time. Consider, for example, the odds of throwing a 12 with a pair of dice -- 1 out of 36. Now assume that the dice will be thrown once a year; that you, the "bond-buyer," agree to pay $50 million if a 12 appears; and that for "insuring" this risk you take in an annual "premium" of $1 million. That would mean you had significantly underpriced the risk. Nevertheless, you could go along for years thinking you were making money -- indeed, easy money. There is actually a 75.4% probability that you would go for a decade without paying out a dime. Eventually, however, you would go broke.

这些商品若未经过仔细的价格核算的话，很可能会形成极高的风险，更严重的是灾害保险通常还有一个特点，那就是问题要经过许久之后才会慢慢地浮现。我举个例来说明，2 颗骰子要掷出 12 点的机率约为 1/36，现在假设我们一年只掷一次，每次可以收取 100 万的赌注，但一旦掷出 12 点时身为庄家的你必须支付 5 千万美元，或许刚开始你会以为这 100 万美元得来全不费工夫，甚至有 75.4%的机率保证你在前十年都不必付出一毛钱，但最后你会发现就长期而言，接受这样的赌注对庄家来说实际上是亏大了，甚至有可能让你倾家荡产。

In this dice example, the odds are easy to figure. Calculations involving monster hurricanes and earthquakes are necessarily much fuzzier, and the best we can do at Berkshire is to estimate a range of probabilities for such events. The lack of precise data, coupled with the rarity of such catastrophes, plays into the hands of promoters, who typically employ an "expert" to advise the potential bond-buyer about the probability of losses. The expert puts no money on the table. Instead, he receives an up-front payment that is forever his no matter how inaccurate his predictions. Surprise: When the stakes are high, an expert can invariably be found who will affirm -- to return to our example -- that the chance of rolling a 12 is not 1 in 36, but more like 1 in 100. (In fairness, we should add that the expert will probably believe that his odds are correct, a fact that makes him less reprehensible -- but more dangerous.)

在玩这种骰子游戏时，其机率还很容易计算，但是要说到估算大型飓风与地震的发生机率的难度就高出的多了，我们自己能做的最多也只是估计一个大约的范围，然而缺乏详细的信息，加上大型的灾害本来就很少发生，正好让一些有心人士有机可乘，通常他们会雇用一些砖家对有意投资这类债券的客户讲解其发生损失的可能性，而这些所谓的砖家玩得根本就是一种无本生意，因为不论他估算的到底准不准，事先都可以拿到一笔定金，更令人讶异的是，回到前面的主题，你会发现无论赌注有多高，专家永远会告诉你掷出 12 点的机率不是 1/36，而是1/100。平心而论，我们必须强调这些砖家可能真的认为自己的看法是对的，这虽然让人不忍予以苛责但却更加凸显他们的危险性。

The influx of "investor" money into catastrophe bonds -- which may well live up to their name -- has caused super-cat prices to deteriorate materially. Therefore, we will write less business in 1998. We have some large multi-year contracts in force, however, that will mitigate the drop. The largest of these are two policies that we described in last year's report -- one covering hurricanes in Florida and the other, signed with the California Earthquake Authority, covering earthquakes in that state. Our "worst-case" loss remains about $600 million after-tax, the maximum we could lose under the CEA policy. Though this loss potential may sound large, it is only about 1% of Berkshire's market value. Indeed, if we could get appropriate prices, we would be willing to significantly increase our "worst-case" exposure.

越来越多的资金涌入投资这类巨灾债券，使得巨灾的投保费率大幅下滑，其结果可能真如其名，终将导致巨大的灾害，为此我们大幅减少 1998 年在这方面的业务量，还好我们先前已签了好几件长期的合约使得冲击相对减小，其中最大的两件在去年的年报中已向各位报告过，一件是佛罗里达的飓风险，另一个是与加州地震局 CEA签订的加州地震险，在最坏的状况下，我们必须承受的损失是税后 6 亿美元，这也是 CEA 保单规定的上限，虽然这个数字看起来很大，但占伯克希尔市值的比例也不过只有 1%，当然我必须再强调的是，只要保费合理，我们很愿意大幅提高最坏状况的风险上限。

Our super-cat business was developed from scratch by Ajit Jain, who has contributed to Berkshire's success in a variety of other ways as well. Ajit possesses both the discipline to walk away from business that is inadequately priced and the imagination to then find other opportunities. Quite simply, he is one of Berkshire's major assets. Ajit would have been a star in whatever career he chose; fortunately for us, he enjoys insurance.

伯克希尔的巨灾保险业务在阿吉特·贾恩的努力下，从无到有，对伯克希尔可谓贡献良多，阿吉特一方面有拒绝价格不合理保单的勇气，一方面又有创造力去开创新的业务，他可以称得上是伯克希尔最珍贵的资产之一，我觉得他不论从事什么行业都可以成为那一行的明星，还好他对于保险业还算是相当有兴趣。