2012: Would Berkshire ever buy an annuity business?

GARY RANSOM: Yes. Your insurance operations have taken on a good chunk of some runoff property-casualty businesses.

There’s another business that has an increasing amount of runoff, and that’s the annuity business, Hartford, ING, Cigna, et cetera.

Is there a time, or are there conditions, under which you might consider taking on some of those liabilities?

WARREN BUFFETT: Sure. In effect, in some of our businesses, we’re taking on some annuity, but not like — I mean, it’s generally classified as property-casualty.

But we would take on annuity books. The problem is there, we’re not going to assume anything much better than the risk-free rate in making a bid for that sort of thing.

I mean, we do not like the idea of taking on long-term liabilities and paying 150 basis points, you know, above Treasuries or something, to do that.

And there are people that will do that. They may not be quite as likely to fulfill those promises in the years to come as we would.

But we want to get money on the liability side at attractive rates. Now, the most attractive is if we can write property-casualty business at an underwriting profit and get it for nothing.

But we’re willing to pay for annuity-type liabilities, and I don’t think it’s impossible you’ll see us do a little of that.

We’ve done some in the UK. We’ve actually taken on a little bit, but it’s not huge. But we’re beginning to take on more.