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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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Leading VA Insurers Are Following Through with Pending De-Risking Moves

In this commentary we’ll discuss some variable annuity product reductions from leading insurers that have been in the pipeline and will be implemented soon. It’s our feeling that these moves provide evidence that most of...

Thinking About Retrenchment – and Related Themes Affecting the VA Market

Variable annuity product filing has been a bit slow of late, so in this commentary we will take a step back and reflect on the subject of retrenchment within the industry, how most insurers are...

A Season of Change: VA Sales Fall as Insurers Cut Back on Their Products

The year 2012 was a time when insurers made reductions to their variable annuity products: these moves included the trimming of guarantees, fee increases, closures of contracts and riders, installation of tighter investment restrictions, cuts...

MetLife’s New Index Annuity – An Example of Reverse Engineering

Last week we shared a rumor that a few insurers were planning to come out with renditions of AXA Equitable’s Structured Capital Strategies, a hybrid index/variable annuity, and said we had not seen a filing...

A Holiday Respite? VA Product Activity Seems to be Simmering Down

Over the past few weeks the pace of product filing in the variable annuity business has slowed, as has the amount of chatter coming through the rumor mill, and we attribute these conditions to the...

Why Did VA Industry Sales Decline in Q3? There Were Multiple Reasons

According to leading industry research firms, variable annuity sales dropped in the third quarter, and we weren’t too surprised by that, given the kind of moves insurers have been making of late. Furthermore we expect...

VA Insurers Look to Ease Back Carefully on Their Benefit Guarantees

Most leading variable annuity insurers are seeking to lower their sales of guaranteed benefits, but want to do so gradually, even if that means making multiple de-risking moves in fairly quick succession. The sheer number...

Industry VA Sales Look Steady for Q3 – But Earnings Results Were Mixed

After reviewing the variable annuity business results of the group of stock-traded insurers we track regularly, we’re figuring that third quarter industry sales were flat to slightly up sequentially, and probably got a little lift...

Hartford Introduces Rider Buyback Program to Accelerate VA Runoff

As the year is winding down we have been thinking that more insurers would consider coming out with guaranteed benefit buyback programs to trim their risk profiles. Late last week we got evidence that such...