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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.

Sundry Thoughts on VA Sales – During a Time of Rider Tweaks and Twists

Lately we’ve learned there was movement along the variable annuity sales leader board during the fourth quarter. For now we think the top 25 will remain in place, with some shifting within that group, although...

Sliding Finish to a Volatile 2008 as Downward Markets Jolt VA Players

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...

Phased Cutbacks to Benefits Continue, May Updates Start to Come In

This week we intended to focus exclusively on developments in variable annuity Guaranteed Lifetime Withdrawal Benefits (GLWBs) however we will mention a few notable changes to other benefit categories, since a few interesting things have...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from December, 2008

Surely the dominant theme in the business today is the effect turbulent markets are having on variable annuity benefit guarantees and in turn on investment platforms, which insurers have been modifying in greater frequency of...

Reflecting on 2008: a Turning Point Year for Variable Annuity Players

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...

Pace of VA Changes is Ramping Up: Price Increases, Benefit Revisions, More

Judging by the sheer amount of activity from variable annuity insurers recently – most of them are trimming the richness of their benefit guarantees and/or raising pricing – we think it’s safe to say the...

A Shift in the Living Benefit Arms Race – VA Insurers Start to Scale Back

In the past six years the variable annuity industry has been marked by fierce competition between insurers over who has the richest guaranteed living benefits, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the...

Our Q3 Commentary Part I – Variable Annuity Insurers Face a Difficult Time

This is the first installment of our third quarter commentary on variable annuity results for selected insurers we monitor regularly, and next week we’ll follow up on others that have not yet reported. Thus far,...