Research & Reports

The fortunes of the variable annuity business are still largely dictated by the performance of companies with the most attractive guaranteed living benefits, and, based on some improvement we saw from a few insurers we...

When fourth quarter variable annuity sales results come out, we’re convinced they will reflect a lack of participation by the industry in the improving equity markets – much as was the case in the prior...

It’s become our custom to dedicate our last commentary each year to looking back at how the variable annuity business performed, to get the evaluation process started before fourth quarter data are released. Thus in...

During the third quarter we saw a familiar pattern that’s emerged lately in the variable annuity business, that of a minority of insurers – those still selling the richer guaranteed benefits – posting exceptional sales,...

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...

Right now on the variable annuity scene insurers are still making changes and adjustments at a rather brisk pace, and we expect that pattern to continue well into the summer, even though it is usually...

First quarter earnings season concluded last week for the publicly-traded insurers we regularly monitor, and for most of them, variable annuity deposits and net flows declined, much as we expected. What surprised us were accounting...

Fourth-quarter earnings season has almost concluded and in this report we’ll offer our customary review of variable annuity operating results for selected publicly-traded insurers. As we expected, most companies went through a difficult time during...

This is our customary early retrospective of the past year for the variable annuity business, in which we’ll offer a narrative of how things unfolded chronologically in 2008, the market conditions that arose and their...