Research & Reports
More Summer Product Initiatives Are Arising on the Variable Annuity Scene
In this commentary we will return to a few storylines from around the variable annuity business that we have been tracking of late, and weigh in on new ones that we have seen emerge…
An Update on Variable Annuity Contract and GLWB Filings in 2013
We have been sifting through recent filings of variable annuity contracts and lifetime withdrawal benefits and, while we haven’t been seeing quite as much activity in the pipeline as in past years, we did catch...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from April-May, 2013
In this commentary we’ll get caught up with variable insurance fund filings from the months of April and May, a time period that was fairly active, however we didn’t see a large number of new...
Lincoln National Communicates Confidence in Its Annuity Business
Investors and analysts are very curious as to how variable annuity operations may affect the health and profitability of insurers, especially since companies are now pulling away from selling rich guarantees. As we noted in...
VA Insurers Say They Are Managing Benefit Risks – But Still Want to Trim Them
It’s been a while since we checked in on variable annuity guaranteed benefit risk levels, and we were reminded of that fact by MetLife’s recent investor day, where the topic was discussed at length. We...
Some Notes on VA Contracts and Riders – That Are Coming and Going
We are still working our way through the May variable annuity prospectus updates, and recently we have found an interesting mixture of activity on the part of issuers, ranging from the scaling back or closing...
A Variety of Tweaks to Contracts, Riders are Coming Through in May Updates
Over the past few weeks we have been occupied with sifting through annual variable annuity prospectus updates, and within some filings we saw adjustments to in-force contracts and benefits that we think provide evidence that...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from March, 2013
This March we didn’t see a great deal of variable insurance fund filings with the SEC. Most of the activity revolved around manager changes and the trimming down of fund platforms through mergers and liquidations…
Spring Arrivals – of New Variable Annuity Product Concepts and Revisions
Each year we look forward to the May prospectus update season – despite the onslaught of filings – because interesting storylines always seem to emerge during that time. In this commentary we’ll discuss a few...