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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.

Notable Product Happenings from Recent VA Contract Updates

This report will be a brief review of noteworthy product developments coming through in annual variable annuity prospectus updates filed recently with the SEC.  We are sure more interesting changes and modifications will be coming...

An IOVA Update – Looking at Current Products, Ones Coming to Market

Lately we’ve fielded an increased number of questions about investment-only variable annuities (IOVAs) so in this commentary we will weigh in further about them. We expect more IOVAs to be filed over the near term...

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...

Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from November and December, 2013

With this report we will get caught up with noteworthy variable insurance filings from the last two months of 2013. There were quite a few interesting developments during that time, particularly related to volatility-control funds…

In 2013, VA Sales Eased While Other Annuity Products Gathered Steam

Throughout most of 2013, variable annuity sales took a downward trajectory, due mostly to the de-risking undertaken by insurers, mirroring moves they had executed the year before. While net flows into VAs slowed, fixed and...

In Recent Filings, Prudential Follows the Flow of Industry Product Trends

Variable annuity insurers are steadily migrating towards simpler contracts and risk-sensitive solutions, and lately Prudential has become one of the latest to weigh in on this front, with some filings that follow emerging patterns…

Principal Financial to Offer a GLWB Exchange Program – Not a Buyback

It’s our opinion that vintage variable annuity benefits remain problematic for quite a few insurers, and we expect more de-risking measures to be taken over time.  Last week Principal Financial filed a program that will...

Summer Moves on the VA Scene – a Mix of Innovation and De-Risking

This summer has been slow in terms of variable annuity product filings – as usually is the case for the time of year – however we have seen enough interesting things come through to give...

Update on Hartford’s Initiative: Some of Our Suspicions Have Been Confirmed

In our last few commentaries we’ve shared our suspicion that, based on language in some recent SEC filings, four state insurance departments might not allow some or all of Hartford’s planned sub-account restrictions on certain...