Research & Reports
Atypical Designs in Variable Annuity GLWBs Sold in the State of New York
Anyone who’s been around the industry for awhile knows that the state of New York does things differently than most other jurisdictions, usually placing very firm restrictions on policies and features before they are approved....
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from July, 2008
It’s once again time for us to check in on variable insurance fund filings, a task we perform each month, and July was pretty active, as we identified 10 new registrations, with some unique offerings...
VA Deposits, Net Flows in 2Q08 – A Few Bright Spots Amid Cloudy Skies
Now that Q2 earnings season has wrapped up for variable annuity insurers we usually cover, we saw that deposits and net flows of most of them dropped, however a few had increases. In this commentary...
VA Guaranteed Accumulation Benefits – More Popularity in the Offing?
In the variable annuity marketplace guaranteed living benefits have certainly proven their worth, although there are some types that have just not gotten as much acceptance as others for various reasons. Even so, it’s our...
New Coverage: Summaries of Selected VA Guaranteed Minimum Accumulation Benefits
This table commences our coverage of variable annuity Guaranteed Minimum Accumulation Benefits (GMABs) that we have identified as still being for sale, including several new ones that have launched recently…
Diverse Thoughts on Directions in the VA Industry, Topics to Keep Tabs On
Second-quarter earnings season for insurers is just getting underway and we’re quite curious to see how variable annuity sales and flows held up for the leading companies, given the many stressors – from without and...
Growing Assets and Escalating Income – GLWB Upgrades Keep Coming
We must confess we were a bit surprised by the increase in variable annuity living benefit filing activity that’s gone on lately. In recent weeks a fresh batch of riders has been registered with the...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from June, 2008
With this commentary we’re catching up again with our monthly reporting on variable insurance filings, in June we noticed more initial registrations than we were expecting, however we believe this activity reflects the fact that...
An Up-and-Coming Product Line – VAs for Defined Contribution Plans, Rollovers
As more Baby Boomers reach retirement age, financial services firms will be competing over who will manage the trillions of dollars these folks have socked away in their defined contribution (DC) plans. We anticipate a...