
Research & Reports
Spanning the Seasons – VA Product Launches Scheduled for Summer and Fall
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...
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...
Diverse Thoughts on Directions in the VA Industry, Topics to Keep Tabs On
Second-quarter earnings season for insurers is just getting underway and we’re quite curious to see how variable annuity sales and flows held up for the leading companies, given the many stressors – from without and...
Summertime in the Variable Annuity Business – Not as Slow as You Think
Recently, in compiling information and data for our reports we’ve been sorting through many regulatory filings, and will continue to do so of course, but this week we’re going to pause a bit from those...
Benefit Outlook – Disparate Notes on VA Guarantees and the Current Climate
A significant number of variable annuity contracts and benefits will be rolling out over the next few months, and as we monitor the goings on, we’ll be watching to see whether new product ideas will...
Continuing Coverage of Public Insurers’ Variable Annuity Results of 2Q07
This report picks up where we left off last week in our monitoring of second-quarter variable annuity sales results for the publicly-traded insurers we track regularly. We found it significant that VA deposits increased for...
A Simpler Story – Insurers Move to Streamline VA Sub-Accounts, Features
In getting started with the New Year, we’ll comment on a growing tendency for insurers to trim the number of sub-account options and features on their variable annuities in order to make them simpler for...
Seeing VA Business Priorities Revealed Through Public Insurers’ Q3 Results
The third quarter was a mixed bag for the nine major public variable insurers we regularly track, as all saw sales levels fall sequentially, but apparently these companies don’t feel the results were troubling and...
Impressions on Consumer-Friendly Issues for the Variable Annuity Business
In our last report we discussed how insurers are building fee reductions into their variable annuities, which we think is good for the industry in that it may help counter some negative perceptions. This week,...