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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.

Thoughts About Directions in Variable Annuity Sales As Q3 Winds Down

The start of the fall season is close upon us, as is the end of the third quarter, so in this commentary we’ll provide some quick thoughts about where we think variable annuity industry sales...

Late Summer Filings Held Yet More IOVA Products, Assorted Changes

In this report we’ll get caught up with product filings from late August – of particular note is that the batch included a number of investment-only variable annuities (IOVAs), providing further evidence that the trend...

MetLife Becomes Latest Insurer to File an Investment-Only VA

For a while now we had a suspicion MetLife would come out with an investment-only variable annuity, since so many of its peers have done so. As it turns out the insurer filed one not...

VA Insurers’ Profits Were Up in 2Q14 – But Sales? Perhaps by a Little

During the second quarter publicly-traded insurers we monitor regularly experienced increased profitability within their variable annuity operations, however sales for most were somewhat lackluster, as has been the case of late…

Jackson is Revamping its GLWBs – Adding Tiered Withdrawal Rates, Fees

Jackson National is an insurer that tends to make interesting – if not downright intriguing – product moves and late last week we saw another example of this in a filing that contained alterations to...

Another Structured Annuity is On The Way – This Time from ING

To date, only a few insurers have come out with structured annuities, which contain a basket of index-linked options with buffers to protect investors against a set percentage of losses. That’s why we were somewhat...

Signs from Earnings Calls Point to Lower VA Industry Deposits in 1Q14

In the first quarter of this year variable annuity sales fell, on a sequential basis, for every member of our group of publicly-traded insurers we watch regularly, which makes us pretty sure that the industry...

VA Benefit Buybacks, Special Offers Come Through in May Filings

While the May variable annuity prospectus update season has been somewhat slower than usual, we did see a few interesting product initiatives filed recently, including instances of buyout programs and other incentives targeting holders of...

Jackson to Suspend Death Benefit Sales, Pru Proceeds with IOVA

It’s been sort of slow going in the variable annuity product pipeline of late, however last week we saw a few interesting developments come through from Jackson National and Prudential: the former will be trimming...