巴菲特致股东的信（2024年）⑦财产意外险

Property-Casualty Insurance

财产意外险

P/C insurance continues to be Berkshire’s core business. The industry follows a financial model that is rare – very rare – among giant businesses.

财产意外险依然是伯克希尔的核心业务。这个行业所遵循的财务模式在大型企业中罕见——非常罕见。

Customarily, companies incur costs for labor, materials, inventories, plant and equipment, etc. before – or concurrently with – the sale of their products or services. Consequently, their CEOs have a good fix on knowing the cost of their product before they sell it. If the selling price is less than its cost, managers soon learn they have a problem. Hemorrhaging cash is hard to ignore.

通常，公司在销售产品或服务之前或与之同时，就要承担劳动力、原材料、库存、厂房和设备等成本。因此，CEO们在产品出售之前就能很好地掌握其成本。如果售价低于成本，管理者很快就能发现问题。现金哗哗流出是很难视而不见的。

When writing P/C insurance, we receive payment upfront and much later learn what our product has cost us – sometimes a moment of truth that is delayed as much as 30 or more years. (We are still making substantial payments on asbestos exposures that occurred 50 or more years ago.)

承保财产意外险则恰恰相反，我们先收到保费，而很久之后才知道我们的产品到底花了多少钱——有时候这个真相大白的时刻会延后30年甚至更久。（我们至今仍在为50多年前发生的石棉赔付案支付巨额赔款。）

This mode of operations has the desirable effect of giving P/C insurers cash before they incur most expenses but carries with it the risk that the company can be losing money – sometimes mountains of money – before the CEO and directors realize what is happening.

这种经营模式有一个诱人的好处：让财产意外险公司在承担大部分费用之前就拥有现金。但它也暗藏风险——在CEO和董事们意识到发生了什么之前，公司可能已经在亏损了——有时是巨亏。

Certain lines of insurance minimize this mismatch, such as crop insurance or hail damage in which losses are quickly reported, evaluated and paid. Other lines, however, can lead to executive and shareholder bliss as the company is going broke. Think coverages such as medical malpractice or product liability. In “long-tail” lines, a P/C insurer may report large but fictitious profits to its owners and regulators for many years – even decades. The accounting can be particularly dangerous if the CEO is an optimist or a crook. These possibilities are not fanciful: History reveals a large number of each species.

某些险种能将这种错配降到最低，比如农作物保险或冰雹险——损失很快就能报告、评估和赔付。然而，另一些险种却能让高管和股东在公司走向破产的路上还洋洋自得。想想医疗事故险或产品责任险。在这些"长尾"险种中，一家财产意外险公司可以连续多年——甚至几十年——向所有者和监管机构报告巨额但虚假的利润。如果CEO是个盲目乐观的人或是个骗子，这种会计核算就尤其危险。这些可能性绝非异想天开：历史上，两种情况都大量存在。

In recent decades, this “money-up-front, loss-payments-later” model has allowed Berkshire to invest large sums (“float”) while generally delivering what we believe to be a small underwriting profit. We make estimates for “surprises” and, so far, these estimates have been sufficient.

近几十年来，这种"先收钱、后赔付"的模式让伯克希尔得以投资大量资金（"浮存金"），同时通常还能实现我们认为尚可的承保利润。我们为"意外情况"做了估算准备，而到目前为止，这些估算都足够应对。

We are not deterred by the dramatic and growing loss payments sustained by our activities. (As I write this, think wildfires.) It’s our job to price to absorb these and unemotionally take our lumps when surprises develop. It’s also our job to contest “runaway” verdicts, spurious litigation and outright fraudulent behavior.

我们不会被我们业务中不断增长的巨额赔付吓住。（我写这段话的时候，正想着野火肆虐的情景。）我们的职责就是在定价中把这些风险消化掉，并在意外发生时冷静地承受损失。同样，我们的职责还包括对抗"失控"的天价判决、无中生有的诉讼和赤裸裸的欺诈行为。

Under Ajit, our insurance operation has blossomed from an obscure Omaha-based company into a world leader, renowned for both its taste for risk and its Gibraltar-like financial strength. Moreover, Greg, our directors and I all have a very large investment in Berkshire in relation to any compensation we receive. We do not use options or other one-sided forms of compensation; if you lose money, so do we. This approach encourages caution but does not ensure foresight.

在阿吉特的领导下，我们的保险业务已从奥马哈一家默默无闻的小公司成长为世界级行业领袖，以其对风险的胃口和直布罗陀般坚固的财务实力而闻名。此外，格雷格、我们的董事和我本人在伯克希尔的投入，相对于我们获得的任何报酬而言都非常巨大。我们不使用期权或其他单方面的薪酬形式；如果你们赔钱，我们也赔。这种安排鼓励了谨慎，但不能保证先见之明。

P/C insurance growth is dependent on increased economic risk. No risk – no need for insurance.

财产意外险的增长取决于经济风险的增加。没有风险——就不需要保险。

Think back only 135 years when the world had no autos, trucks or airplanes. Now there are 300 million vehicles in the U.S. alone, a massive fleet causing huge damage daily. Property damage arising from hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires is massive, growing and increasingly unpredictable in their patterns and eventual costs.

回想仅仅135年前，世界上还没有汽车、卡车或飞机。如今仅美国就有3亿辆机动车，这支庞大的车队每天都在制造大量事故。飓风、龙卷风和野火造成的财产损失巨大且不断攀升，其发生规律和最终成本越来越难以预测。

It would be foolish – make that madness – to write ten-year policies for these coverages, but we believe one-year assumption of such risks is generally manageable. If we change our minds, we will change the contracts we offer. During my lifetime, auto insurers have generally abandoned one-year policies and switched to the six-month variety. This change reduced float but allowed more intelligent underwriting.

为这些保险业务开出十年期的保单是愚蠢的——准确说是疯狂——但我们相信一年期的风险承担通常是可以驾驭的。如果我们改变看法，就会相应调整我们提供的保险条款。在我一生中，汽车保险公司已经普遍放弃了一年期保单，转向半年期。这一变化减少了浮存金，但让承保决策更加明智。

No private insurer has the willingness to take on the amount of risk that Berkshire can provide. At times, this advantage can be important. But we also need to shrink when prices are inadequate. We must never write inadequately-priced policies in order to stay in the game. That policy is corporate suicide.

没有任何私人保险公司愿意或有能力承担伯克希尔能够承担的风险量。有时候，这种优势至关重要。但当价格不合适的时候，我们也需要收缩。我们绝不能为了留在牌桌上而承保价格不到位的保单。那无异于企业自杀。

Properly pricing P/C insurance is part art, part science and is definitely not a business for optimists. Mike Goldberg, the Berkshire executive who recruited Ajit, said it best: “We want our underwriters to daily come to work nervous, but not paralyzed.”

财产意外险的定价是一半艺术、一半科学，绝对不是乐观主义者的领地。招募阿吉特进入伯克希尔的高管迈克·戈德堡 (Mike Goldberg) 说得最好："我们希望我们的承保人每天来上班时都心怀紧张，但不至于手足无措。"

All things considered, we like the P/C insurance business. Berkshire can financially and psychologically handle extreme losses without blinking. We are also not dependent on reinsurers and that gives us a material and enduring cost advantage. Finally, we have outstanding managers (no optimists) and are particularly well-situated to utilize the substantial sums P/C insurance delivers for investment.

综合来看，我们喜欢财产意外险这门生意。伯克希尔在财务和心理上都能毫不畏缩地承受极端损失。我们也不依赖再保险公司，这赋予了我们实质且持久的成本优势。最后，我们有出色的管理者（没有一个是乐观主义者），而且在运用财产意外险业务产生的巨额资金进行投资方面，我们有着得天独厚的条件。

Over the past two decades, our insurance business has generated $32 billion of after-tax profits from underwriting, about 3.3 cents per dollar of sales after income tax. Meanwhile, our float has grown from $46 billion to $171 billion. The float is likely to grow a bit over time and, with intelligent underwriting (and some luck), has a reasonable prospect of being costless.

在过去二十年里，我们的保险业务通过承保产生了320亿美元的税后利润，大约相当于每收入1美元保费获得税后利润3.3美分。同期，我们的浮存金从460亿美元增长到了1710亿美元。浮存金未来可能会随时间继续小幅增长，并且凭借精明的承保（再加上一些运气），有望实现零成本。