Research & Reports
Works in Progress: Contingent Annuities for Mutual Funds, Managed Accounts
For some months we’ve been planning to provide an update on annuities constructed to wrap living benefits around retail mutual funds and brokerage accounts, because we haven’t checked in on them for a while and...
Update: Summaries of Contingent Annuity Contracts
This table contains summaries of contingent annuity contracts, which are products built to wrap living benefits around retail mutual funds and brokerage accounts, dating to when the first ones were filed, back in 2006…
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from June, 2009
In this report we’ll offer our monthly notes and comments on variable insurance fund filings, and we’d describe June as having been not very active in terms of new registrations, but there were numerous mergers,...
An Ongoing Process – Finding Significance in VA Industry Product Changes
Because of the steady flow of tweaks and adjustments insurers have been making to their variable annuity offerings, it’s not easy to determine which changes are meaningful, and which are simply “noise.” In this commentary...
Spanning the Seasons – VA Product Launches Scheduled for Summer and Fall
As we commence the third quarter – usually a pretty slow period for variable industry sales – the pace of de-risking seems to be settling down a bit, but the process is not over by...
On the Rebound? Plotting the Trajectory of the VA Industry in 2Q09
Now that the second quarter is wrapping up we figured we’d take a few moments to take quick stock of that period, how the variable annuity industry might have performed. It’s our opinion that when...
Continuing Our Coverage of Recent VA Contract and Rider Movements
This week we’re following up on our previous commentary with further notes on recent filings of variable annuity contracts and benefits. In monitoring what’s been going on we’re of the opinion that now more than...
Update: Summaries of New VA Contracts Filed in 2008
This is our final update of new variable annuity contracts filed with the SEC in calendar year 2008…
Digging Into the Details: Movements in VA Designs, Applications
As this week begins, we’ve been combing through variable annuity contract registrations – including ones from this year we haven’t commented on yet – and so far we’ve been finding interesting designs and approaches getting...