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Research & Reports

Soleares Research, LLC is a market research and consulting firm servicing the annuity and life insurance businesses. We provide, through our website, periodic articles that cover important industry trends; we also offer clients phone or on-site consultations, executive briefings and presentations. We pride ourselves on first-class customer service and responsiveness to our clients. We aim to be an indispensable resource to the marketplace.
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A Simpler Story – Insurers Move to Streamline VA Sub-Accounts, Features

In getting started with the New Year, we’ll comment on a growing tendency for insurers to trim the number of sub-account options and features on their variable annuities in order to make them simpler for...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from November, 2006

We continue to see variable insurers add funds with sophisticated quantitative and non-correlative investment methods, and one of these cropped up in November, however during that month most activity centered on tweaking and consolidating investment...

Assessing Windows of Opportunity for Variable Annuities in Qualified Plans

One topic we plan to tune into regularly in our reports is the use of variable annuities in qualified plans, a practice that has its critics, yet quite a few industry observers think this section...

VA Contract Trends – More Immediate Income Products on the Horizon

This year we haven’t seen as many new variable annuity contracts being registered as in the past, a fact we think reflects current conditions like the consolidation of market share, the competition around benefit features...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from October, 2006

Over the month of October, we identified 46 new variable funds registered, and these reflected the current popular interest in hedging and shorting strategies, Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), and the use of mathematical modeling in devising...

On Revenue Sharing, Directed Brokerage Deals – More Disclosure is Coming

Variable product insurers and mutual fund companies have at times used creative means to pay for, or receive compensation from, financial firms they have relationships with, while not always revealing these arrangements to shareholders. Now...

Seeing VA Business Priorities Revealed Through Public Insurers’ Q3 Results

The third quarter was a mixed bag for the nine major public variable insurers we regularly track, as all saw sales levels fall sequentially, but apparently these companies don’t feel the results were troubling and...

Beyond the VA “Arms Race” – Towards Meeting Retirement Income Needs

A sentiment we’ve been hearing from industry executives lately is that the variable annuity business already has a plethora of products and features due to the competitive “arms race” that has taken place in recent...

New Internal Replacement Accounting Could Be Challenging for Annuity Insurers

In the coming months, an issue of much interest to annuity issuers will be that of an impending change in accounting for Deferred Acquisition Costs (DAC) on internal replacements that will impact how companies conduct...