
Research & Reports
More Rate Sheets – And Fee-Based Contracts – Entering the VA Space
A number of interesting new contracts and optional guaranteed benefits were filed with the SEC recently, leading us to believe the industry is sprucing up its products in sort of a “back to school” mode...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from July, 2016
This report will contain our coverage of noteworthy variable insurance fund filings from the prior month. We saw no new registrations in July, but a good deal of activity involving sub-advisory and fee changes…
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from June, 2016
This report will cover variable fund filings from June that we found notable. During the month a significant amount of activity we saw involved changes to sub-advisors and fees…
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from April-May, 2016
In this report we’ll get caught up with noteworthy variable fund filings from the months of April and May. We didn’t see too many new fund registrations during the two months; most filings involved adjustments...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from March, 2016
During March the pace of variable fund filing activity was pretty lively in our view, and among interesting developments was the introduction of a new sub-advised trust from insurer Guardian Life…
An Update on Variable Insurance Managed-Volatility Portfolios
In this brief commentary we’ll touch on trends in managed-volatility portfolios, drawing on year-end 2015 data we gathered from SEC filings, which show how assets under management in this subset of the variable fund universe...
Reviewing Variable Insurance Fund Filings from February, 2016
Each year February is a month when a large number of new variable insurance funds get filed with the SEC in preparation for their eventual addition to contracts during the May prospectus update season. This...
Casual Thoughts on the Variable Annuity Business as Q1 Winds Down
This will be a very brief commentary containing random thoughts on the variable annuity scene, as it looks to us at this point in the year. The brevity of this report is mostly due to...
Puzzling Out Meanings Within Recent VA Contract and Rider Filings
In this commentary we’ll discuss some variable annuity product filings with the SEC from recent weeks that we found interesting, some of which, we’ll admit, have elements we are not yet totally clear on…