M20:30
保险业务会给我们带来 float。
The insurance business provides us with float.
而 float 就是我们手里持有、但并不属于我们的钱。
And float is money that we hold that doesn't belong to us.
这有点像银行有存款。
It's like a bank having deposits.
银行有存款。
A bank has deposits.
那些钱并不属于银行，但银行持有这些钱。
The money doesn't belong to it, but it holds the money.
那么，银行持有存款时，除了 demand deposits 之外，其他存款都有明确成本，也就是附带一个利率。
Now, when a bank holds deposits, on everything except demand deposits, there's an explicit cost, an interest rate attached to it.
另外，还有运营整个系统和吸收这些资金的成本，这些成本也必须分摊到 demand deposits 和 time deposits 上。
And then there are the costs of running the system and gathering the money, which also must be attributed both to demand and time deposits.
所以，获取他们所说的 deposits，也就是我们所说的 float，是有成本的。
So there's a cost to getting what they would call deposits and we could call float.
在保险业务里，也有类似的现象。投保人在保单期一开始就把钱交给我们，所以等于我们是提前收到了这项产品的款项。
In the insurance business, a similar phenomenon takes place in that policyholders give us their money at the start of the policy period, and therefore we get the money paid in advance for the product.
第二，赔付结案是需要时间的，尤其是在 liability 这一块。
And secondly, it takes time to settle losses, particularly in the liability area.
如果只是你的车翼子板撞坏了，那通常会很快处理完。
If you bang up a fender on your car, it's going to get settled very quickly.
所以——但如果是复杂的人身伤害之类的情况，可能要过好几年才能结案。
So there's— but if there's a complicated injury or something, it may take some years to settle.
而在这段期间里，这笔钱是由我们持有的。
And during that period, we hold the money.
所以实际上，我们拥有的东西，某种意义上就相当于银行的存款。
So we have, in effect, something that is tantamount to the deposits of a bank.
但问题是——钱在哪里呢？
But where is the— where is the money?
银行的存款，它的大致成本是很容易算出来的。
Deposits of a bank, it's quite easy to calculate the approximate cost.
但保险公司持有的 float，你其实并不知道它的成本到底是多少，除非等到你的所有保单都到期，而且所有赔案都已经结清。
In the case of the float that the insurance company has, you don't really know what the cost of that float is until all your policies and losses— your policies have expired and your losses have all been settled.
而有些情况下，那可能要等到非常非常久。
Well, that's forever in some cases.
所以在这个过程中，你只能一路做估算，看看这个 float 的
So you're only making an estimate as you go along of what that float is
成本是多少。
costing.
到目前为止，就 Berkshire 来说，在我们做这门生意的二十九年里，看起来——当然永远不能百分之百确定，因为你不知道未来一定会发生什么——但看起来，我们的 float 平均来说并不花我们什么成本。
To date with Berkshire, in the 29 years we've been in the business, it appears— never certain because you don't know for sure what's going to happen— but it appears that our float does not cost us anything on average.
有些年份我们承保亏损了，那就说明它是有成本的。
It's been years when we've had an underwriting loss when there's a cost.
也有些年份我们承保盈利了，所以等于出现了反向成本。
There's been years when we had an underwriting profit and so we had a reverse cost.
所以这些年来，我们是在非常有利的条件下拿到这些 float 的。
So we have obtained that float on very advantageous terms over the years.
更重要得多——我是说，至少同样重要的是——拿到它的成本要低，在我们这个案例里甚至是零成本；但另一个同样重要的点是，我们让它大幅增长了。
Far more, I mean, fully as important as that, it's important to get it at a low cost, in our case no cost, but the other important thing is that we've grown it dramatically.
所以我们拿到了越来越多的钱，而且这些钱不带任何成本。
And so we've gotten more and more money without having any cost attached to it.
如果我们现在仍然只有一九六七年那大概一千六百万到一千七百万美元的 float，而且它是零成本，那当然也很好；不过，一千七百万美元的免费资金当然有价值，但也没大到哪里去。
And if we still had our $16 or $17 million, I guess, of float that we had in 1967, and it was no cost, it would be very nice, but $17 million of free money is worth something, but it's not worth a ton.
如果我们能有七十亿美元，而且把它做到是免费的资金，那它就非常非常有价值了。
Having $7 billion, if we can achieve that as free money, it's worth a lot of money.
这种增长，大概在 Berkshire 这个案例里，并没有被大家充分认识到；同样地，零成本资金随着时间推移对我们价值增长所产生的作用，大家也没有充分理解。
And that growth has not probably generally been appreciated fully in connection with Berkshire, nor has the interplay of having zero-cost money in terms of affecting our gain in value over time.
大家总是在看我们的资产端，但对负债端关注得没那么多。
People have always looked at our asset side, but they haven't paid as much attention to the liability side.
Charlie 和我非常关注这一点。我的意思是，企业之所以会发展成现在这个样子，并不完全是偶然；而且我们也打算今后继续让它朝这个方向发展。
Charlie and I pay a lot of attention to that, and I mean, it's not entirely an accident that the business has developed in this manner, and we have intentions of trying to make it continue to develop in this manner in the future.
不过外面也是有竞争对手的。
But we've got competitors out there too.
float 本身并不天然就是好东西。
Float per se is not a blessing.
我们可以给你们举出很多保险公司的例子，它们以为制造 float 很美妙，结果在承保上亏了太多钱，最后还不如从来没听说过保险这个行业。
We can show you many insurance companies that thought it was wonderful to generate float, and they have lost so much money in underwriting that they'd be better off if they'd never heard of the insurance business.
但这门工作的关键是，要拿到它，要让数量不断增长，但最重要的是，要低成本地拿到它。
But the job is to get it, get it in increasing quantities, but above all, get it cheap.
这就是我们一直在努力做的事。
And that's what we work at.
而你要在这个行业里做到这一点，就必须得有某种竞争优势。
And you do that in the business through having some kind of competitive advantages.
光有一家普通的保险公司，是做不到的。
You won't do it just by having an ordinary insurance company.
普通的保险公司不是一个好生意。
The ordinary insurance company is not a good business.
我们在某些方面能做到，是因为我们对这个行业的态度不一样。
We have it in certain respects because of our attitude toward the business.
我们能做到，也是因为我们的财务实力给了我们一些竞争优势。
We have it because our financial strength gives us certain competitive advantages.
而在 GEICO 这个案例里，我们之所以能做到，是因为它的运营成本非常低。
And we have it in the case of GEICO because of a very low-cost operation.
我们要做的，就是努力想办法，随着时间推移，把这些竞争优势一个一个都尽可能发挥到最大。
And it's up to us to try and figure out ways to maximize each one of those competitive advantages over time.
这些优势是我们自己建立起来的。
We've built those advantages.
我的意思是，在一九六七年，保险行业并不是这么看我们的。
I mean, in 1967, we were not looked at that way in the insurance business.
我们当时——
We were—