This will be a fairly long commentary because variable insurance fund filing activity picked up nicely last month – among notable developments was the filing of a newly-formed trust containing a large number of fund registrations. Along with this report we’ll be updating our coverage of managed-volatility portfolios...

In our view, variable insurance portfolio filing activity was slow during March, thus this commentary will be a brief one compared to past fund reports. During the month we didn’t identify any new registrations, but we did see a good number of sub-advisory changes, and other adjustments...

This report will conclude our tracking of variable insurance managed-volatility portfolios for 2018, referencing data we have gathered from trust annual reports. In addition to trends in fund assets and returns, we will discuss refinements we have made to our data set...

Historically February is when many new variable funds are filed in preparation for the May prospectus update season when such funds will be added to variable contracts. That pattern was very much in effect this year; in addition, we saw numerous adjustments and changes...

This commentary contains our customary review of variable fund-related filings from the prior month. In December we saw a smattering of new registrations plus numerous investment platform changes, including sub-advisory replacements and proposed mergers...

If we were to characterize the year 2018 for the variable annuity business based on what we know thus far, we would call it a time of renewal, as sales started to recover, an improvement that has helped brighten prospects for the annuity industry as a whole...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from November, 2018

This commentary contains our customary review of variable fund-related filings from the prior month and a quarterly update on trends in variable managed-volatility portfolios with data through the third quarter...

In this commentary we’ll cover noteworthy variable fund filings from last month, a time when we saw multiple registrations of new funds of funds (F-of-Fs), some that will invest in underlying exchange-traded funds (ETFs), others that will seek to manage for volatility. We saw a large number of fund changes...

In this commentary we’ll provide our usual review of fund-related filings from last month as well as an update on trends in variable managed-volatility portfolios through the first half of the year...

Digging into Some Noteworthy Variable Annuity Product Filings

In recent weeks we’ve been noticing some interesting variable annuity product filings come through – most of them involving changes to existing contracts and benefits – and in this report we’ll report on them...

August was another lively month for variable fund-related filings as there were a few new registrations, some new classes, and a host of interesting changes...

VA Sales for Public Insurers Improved in 2Q18, Helping Lift the Industry

Variable annuity sales for most stock-traded insurers we follow regularly showed improvement in the second quarter, which no doubt contributed to the industry’s quarter-over-quarter rise. This report will be our customary quarterly rundown of what we gleaned from insurers’ earnings reports...

Just like the prior month, in June we saw a fairly substantial amount of variable insurance fund filing activity, including quite a few changes to investment platforms through mergers and liquidations...

In this report we’ll update our tracking of variable insurance managed-volatility portfolios, referencing asset and other data for the first quarter of this year. We will also point out a few ways we have added to our coverage of this subset of the fund universe...

On the variable insurance fund front, this May was distinguished by a fairly large amount of new registrations, which is not typical of that month. We also saw a good amount of change activity...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from March, 2018

This report covers variable insurance fund filings that we found interesting from last month, a time when a relatively small batch of new registrations came through, along with a fairly large amount of changes to existing funds...

An Update on Variable Managed-Volatility Portfolios Through 4Q17

This report completes our coverage of trends in variable insurance managed-volatility portfolios, referencing data through the end of 2017...

A Brief Reflection on Current Conditions in the Variable Annuity Market

Given that not much variable annuity product filing activity has occurred since our last update, this week we will provide a simple reflection on current conditions in the industry...

As usual, our last commentary of December is a reflection on how the variable annuity business performed this year, based upon what we know thus far from sales levels and product developments...

During November the rate of variable fund filing tends to slow down, and such was the case this year. We noticed no new registrations and only a moderate amount of other activity...

Last month we saw a good number of interesting variable insurance fund filings, including new registrations, shareholder votes on various issues, and sub-advisory replacements, which we’ll cover in this report...

This report continues our regular coverage of trends in variable insurance managed-volatility portfolios, referencing data compiled through the first half of this year...

Variable fund filing activity has started to pick up this summer: in this report we’ll cover a number of interesting new portfolios that were registered in July, as well as investment platform adjustments...

This will be a longer-than-usual fund report because during June we saw a surge in filing activity, including quite a few new portfolio registrations. There was also no shortage of changes of various types...

Summer Thoughts – On Competitive Conditions in the VA Business

As we opined in our last commentary, activity along the variable annuity product pipeline continues to be rather slow, thus we don’t have a great deal of new developments to cover. Our intention with this report is to get caught up with competitive conditions, from a product perspective, as they stand currently...