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Research & Reports
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from December, 2007
We conducted our regular monitoring of variable fund-related filings to wrap up the last month of 2007 and found evidence of investment trends we’ve been seeing in the industry. New funds-of-funds (F-of-Fs) of different types...
Picking Up Where We Left Off – Another Spate of New VA Withdrawal Riders
It’s only January but we need to comment again on variable annuity living benefit proliferation because, bridging the very end of last year into this one, a number of insurers have filed new or enhanced...
Variable Funds-of-Funds Keep Increasing In Number, Accumulating Assets
Compared to the bull market years, the role that underlying sub-accounts play in the sale of variable insurance products has certainly been diminished, however, a storyline that holds much interest for us is how money...
Reflecting on the Year Almost Past: 2006 in the Variable Annuity Business
As the holiday season is now upon us, in our last commentary of the year we’ll take the opportunity to quickly consider how things went for the variable annuity business in 2006, using currently-available data,...
Impressions on the Variable Annuity Business in 2007 – Part I
Last year at this time we published a commentary with our reflections on how the variable annuity industry performed in 2006, based on what we knew at that point, and made some suggestions as to...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from November, 2007
In November, variable insurance fund filing activity with the SEC was pretty vigorous, and we identified 13 new registrations, notable among them some funds-of-funds (F-of-Fs) and several portfolios with a global or emerging markets focus....
New Coverage: Summaries of Selected New Variable Annuity Contracts
This table commences our coverage of new variable annuity contracts filed recently with the SEC…
Contract Compilation – Our Remarks on the Latest VAs Filed This Year
In the interest of remaining on top of what’s happening with variable annuity contracts, and given the fact that we haven’t touched on them for several months, this week we’ll give our observations on chassis...
New Coverage: Summaries of Selected VA Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits
This table initiates our coverage of variable annuity Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits (GLWBs) currently for sale in the industry…